The British government spends 25 times as much on benefits for young people as it does on programmes designed to help them find work, according to the author of a major government-commissioned review.
Former minister Alan Milburn described the disparity as ‘shameful’ and called for a complete ‘system reset’ to address the growing crisis of youth inactivity across the UK.
Nearly one million young people in the UK are currently not in work, education or training, a situation Milburn attributed to widespread institutional failure at the state level.
Speaking on the BBC, Milburn said: ‘This is a failure. This is the failure of the welfare system, but it’s a failure, I’m sorry, of the school system, the skills system, the health system.’
Official figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 957,000 young people were classified as Neet between October and December 2025, representing 12.8% of that age group.
More than half of those young people were deemed economically inactive, meaning they were not actively seeking employment at the time the data was collected.
Milburn’s calculations compare spending on core employment programmes run by the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus against key benefits including Universal Credit, Job Seekers’ Allowance, Personal Independence Payment and Disability Living Allowance.
He said: ‘What is shameful is that as we’ve uncovered in the course of this review for every £25 that we spend keeping young people on benefits, we spend only a pound helping them get into work through employment support.’
The former Labour health secretary under Tony Blair urged the party to embrace welfare reform, saying: ‘Labour is what it says on the tin. It’s the party of work. Work gives purpose. Work gives income. Work gives meaning.’
Milburn acknowledged that the rise in mental health problems among young people was real but argued that such diagnoses should not mean young people are not expected or encouraged to enter the workplace.
He also pointed to the disappearance of entry-level jobs as a significant barrier, noting that the number of young people in employment had been falling for approximately 25 years.
‘Entry level jobs are disappearing, so the jobs that you used to be able to get for the first rung on the ladder, they’ve gone,’ Milburn said during the interview.
He said some young people were submitting dozens or even hundreds of job applications without receiving any response from prospective employers.
James Reed, chief executive of recruitment agency Reed Group, said employers failing to reply to applicants represented ‘not good behaviour’ and acknowledged a sustained decline in available vacancies.
Reed called on Chancellor Rachel Reeves to reverse the 1.2% increase in employer National Insurance contributions, arguing it was making it ‘more expensive and more difficult for employers’ to take on staff.
The first part of Milburn’s report will be published this week, with his full recommendations expected later in the year alongside a complete methodology for the spending comparison figures.