The youth NEET crisis was avoidable

The latest labour market data shows that more than a million young Brits are economically inactive. Tom Bewick suggests that poor policy decisions since COVID-19 are mainly to blame.

One of the last Conservative government's little-known achievements was halving the number of under-25s not in education, employment, or training—the so-called NEET problem.

In 2010, Gordon Brown's outgoing Labour government bequeathed a NEET profile that had been steadily rising throughout the 2000s, reaching a peak of 1 million around the time George Osborne introduced his first austerity budget.

Although child benefits were curtailed and Education Maintenance Allowances (EMAs) were withdrawn in England from further education students aged 16-19, the Tories had slashed the NEET figure to about 600,000 by the end of the pandemic in 2021. Indeed, the graph below shows that the numbers of economically inactive young people were drastically reduced. 

This was because policymakers, particularly Treasury officials, understood that some countercyclical active labour market measures were needed to safeguard youth opportunities. During the lockdowns, specific measures were introduced, includi…