Experts are warning of a “lost generation” as more than one million people under the age of 24 find themselves without work or a training course.
Three young people affected by the crisis have shared their personal experiences of navigating an increasingly difficult job market across the UK.
Zaynah, aged 24, says she has applied for more than 200 jobs since leaving college a year ago and has not received a single response from any employer.
A health condition, eczema, prevented her from pursuing nail art, and she has since been focusing her applications on makeup and retail beauty roles.
She credits a six-week charity scheme called Spear with helping her build the confidence she says was previously holding her back from engaging with employers.
“I never worked before… I wasn’t very confident at all. I was a very shy girl,” she said, reflecting on how much has changed since joining the programme.
“Now I feel like [there is] a big difference from what I was, and now I can be more confident, I feel like I can hold conversations better now,” she added.
She believes her lack of experience is the central reason she continues to struggle, saying it feels restricting and is preventing her from securing any roles.
Luke, 23, studied product design at Central St Martin’s University and has now applied for more than 400 positions without finding employment.
He described the online application process as “quite vile,” saying applicants are repeatedly forced to re-enter the same information across different stages of each form.
“Any normal person coming out of a university degree would think: ‘Yes, I’ve got a degree. I am now open to all these starting, junior jobs’,” he said.
Luke says graduates then discover that finances have dried up or that artificial intelligence has replaced many of the entry-level roles they were hoping to fill.
He began claiming Universal Credit in March last year and described visiting job centres as “really depressing,” saying repeated rejection had left him feeling humiliated.
“I’ve been rejected for cleaning roles, barista, normal cafe jobs, receptionist in hotels, waiters at restaurants,” he said, outlining the breadth of positions he had pursued unsuccessfully.
Luke described a Catch-22 in which he lacks sufficient experience for graduate roles yet is considered overskilled for basic positions such as shelf-stacking or cleaning.
He recalled applying for a janitor role and attending an interview, only to never hear back, which he described as emblematic of a wider sense of futility.
Tarun, 18, had his studies interrupted when his grandmother died and he travelled to India, resulting in him being removed from a plumbing course he had been taking.
“I had to go to India because of my grandma’s death. When I came back, I didn’t know what to do. It’s been like a year,” he said.
He described applying for numerous jobs and education programmes after returning, only to be turned away each time due to a lack of experience.
“I felt trapped. It was like a loop, going over again and again. I just felt lost,” he said, capturing the sense of hopelessness felt by many in his position.
Lacking external support or motivation, Tarun turned to music, writing songs and rapping as a way of coping with his circumstances and keeping himself going.
“I didn’t have anyone to motivate me, so I motivated myself. I was like: I’ll start doing rapping. So I wrote songs, I started rapping to entertain myself. That really helped me,” he said.