Youth unemployment crisis warning as young people unprepared for work

The call comes on the day the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published ‘The State of Global Teenage Career Preparation’.

The major report highlights the mismatch globally between young people’s career aspirations and the future job types available.

It reveals that while jobs in digital, computing, data science and green have grown rapidly since the year 2000, the jobs that young people aspire to has hardly changed in 25 years.

Official figures for the UK from the ONS show there are almost 1 million (987,000) young people not in education or employment (NEET) - the highest figure in over 10 years.

(Image: Education & Employers)

However, at the same time employers are struggling to recruit, leaving the UK facing a skills shortage and creating a reliance on overseas recruitment for jobs such as biological scientists, bricklayers, care workers, carpenters, graphic designers, laboratory and pharmaceutical technicians and roofers.

Nick Chambers, CEO of Education & Employers, said about the impending crisis: “We need urgent action today to secure growth and full youth employment tomorrow.

“This means immediately scaling up our efforts to help young people see what they can be.

“Our charity’s mission is to ensure that every young person in our country, wherever they live, whatever their parents’ or carers’ circumstances, can meet a diverse range of volunteers to hear first-hand either in person or virtually about jobs and the world of work.

“This can be done quickly and easily, and swiftly scaled to cover millions of young people through initiatives such as our ‘Inspiring the Future’ programme, where a volunteer from the world of work simply chats informally to pupils either in primary or secondary schools, inspiring them about their job and career journey.

“This combination of either in-person or interactive virtual chats has the potential to revolutionise how children and young people see the opportunities open to them - giving them the chance to meet a diverse range of people doing different jobs, regardless of their geographic or socioeconomic background or family connections.

"One hour a year from each of our volunteers regularly throughout a child's school years will have a hugely positive impact on their future life choices. Our extensive research has shown continuous interventions starting in primary school are needed.”

Over 452,000 children and young people every year are meeting and chatting with people from the world of work through the Inspiring the Future platform.

While 92,000 people have registered as volunteers together with 12,500 primary and secondary schools.

It has already enabled 4,950,000 interactions between young people and people from the world of work.

Education & Employers is seeking support to massively expand this reach so that every young person can hear from a career role model.

Mr Chambers added: “As a matter of urgency, we want to increase from just under 0.5 million a year children and young people to 1 million and then to 5 million.

“Now is the time for action to guarantee that our young people fully understand the opportunities open to them and that we have the future workforce we need to ensure a vibrant and prosperous economy and society for years to come.”