Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) UK boss John Boumphrey has called on businesses, local governments, and colleges to tackle youth unemployment together, arguing the crisis stems from systemic failures rather than individual shortcomings.
Nearly one million young Britons are currently not in education, employment, or training, with the unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds reaching 16.2%, the highest since late 2014.
Boumphrey, Amazon’s country manager for the UK, said: “We have to stop blaming young people,” adding that the education system was not “producing young people who are ready for work.”
He called for work experience to become mandatory for those aged over 16, describing it as “transformative” in teaching skills that employers consistently seek but schools rarely cover.
“It’s not a motivation problem, it’s a system problem, and that requires a system response,” Boumphrey said, pushing back against narratives that portray young people as lacking drive or resilience.
Boumphrey said: “I think too often you read about young people that somehow they lack motivation, they lack resilience, they lack the will to develop skills. That is not our experience.”
Amazon employs 75,000 people across the UK, with half of those recruited directly from education or unemployment, according to Boumphrey, who cited the company’s work with young people with learning disabilities and autism.
Despite the broader unemployment picture, Amazon says it faces a skills shortage of its own, struggling to fill technical roles created by the introduction of robotics across its 30 UK warehouses.
Boumphrey said that when robots entered Amazon’s warehouses, fears of job losses proved unfounded. “Actually, the reverse happened, we ended up employing more people,” he said.
Roles such as mechatronics engineers and technicians capable of maintaining automated systems have proven difficult to fill. “They’re not roles that exist. We can’t find enough people to fill those roles,” he said.
Jane Foley, managing director at Rabobank, described the youth unemployment rate as “a horrible number,” warning that changes in hospitality hiring had closed doors for many young people entering the workforce.
Foley noted that minimum wage legislation and technology had contributed to a reduction in entry-level hospitality jobs, which traditionally offered many young people their first taste of work experience.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies published research indicating the current decline in youth employment is approaching the scale of drops seen during the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Former Labour minister Alan Milburn, who is due to publish an independent review of UK youth unemployment this summer, previously described the issue as “a social catastrophe, an economic catastrophe and a political catastrophe.”
Andy Wilkins, a 26-year-old University of East London graduate living in Southend-on-Sea, has been out of work for nearly a year and has been rejected by employers including Burger King, Superdrug, and Next.
Wilkins said he had exhausted £2,000 in savings on rising bills and now relies on £400 a month in Universal Credit. “I am desperate to work, no job is too big or too small, I have that sort of mindset,” he said.
Niki Fuchs, co-founder and chief executive of Office Space in Town, said providing work experience is a “mindset” and that very little stops firms from offering it to young people.
She said she tells staff and clients she will give their teenage children work experience “without questioning it because we think that’s part of what we need to do for society.”
On the subject of tax, Boumphrey said Amazon contributed more than £5.8 billion to the UK last year, including corporation tax, Business rates, national insurance contributions, and digital services tax.
Amazon has repeatedly declined to disclose its corporation tax figure separately, with Boumphrey arguing that for a “high investment mode” business the figure can fluctuate year-to-year and be “taken out of context” as a result.