Youth Unemployment needs more than a Jobs Pledge - It needs a National Youth Legacy Movement...
Updated: 19 minutes ago
Sir Gareth Southgate is right to focus attention on what too many young people are losing: not simply a job, but the everyday guidance, encouragement and human connection that help a young person find their confidence, purpose and place in society.
Reflecting on his own football career, he has highlighted the importance of coaches, physiotherapists, kit staff and the wider support network surrounding a player. His concern is that young people entering an increasingly remote and automated labour market may be denied that same formative experience of workplace mentoring.
This should not become a simplistic argument about working from home as flexible working also has value. The deeper leadership question is whether Britain is creating enough places in which young people can be seen, supported, challenged and developed.
Nearly one million 16-to-24-year-olds are currently estimated to be not in education, employment or training. Alan Milburn’s review has placed the potential annual economic cost of youth unemployment at up to £125 billion. Employers are also warning that taxation, employment costs and uncertainty are making it harder to take a risk on young talent.
Creating 100,000 work-based opportunities would be welcome. However, even if every opportunity reached a young person currently classified as NEET, approximately 900,000 would remain outside that offer. That is why we must move from isolated initiatives to a National Youth Legacy Strategy.
The Youth Charter has argued that apprenticeship policy must connect jobs to journeys, skills to opportunity, opportunity to enterprise and enterprise to community wealth. Sport, football, arts, culture, leisure and recreation can provide tens of thousands of jobs, apprenticeships and entrepreneurial pathways but only if we stop treating them as peripheral activities and recognise them as part of the country’s social and economic infrastructure.
Our proposal is practical:
Establish a National Youth Taskforce capable of coordinating government, business, sport, arts, education and civil society.
Give metro mayors and local partnerships the authority to bring employers, Chambers of Commerce, universities, colleges, clubs and community organisations around one place-based plan.
Reform the Apprenticeship Levy so that funds returned unused to the Treasury can support accessible local pathways, including opportunities generated by Premier League clubs and the wider football economy.
Create Community Campuses offering young people somewhere to go, something to do and someone to show them.
Recruit and equip Social Coaches who can provide the trusted mentoring and support network that Sir Gareth experienced throughout football.
Develop both degree and community-based “street apprenticeship” pathways, ensuring that talent is recognised wherever it is found.
Major sporting events should also leave more than memories, medals and temporary volunteering opportunities. A Youth Charter Legacy Levy could connect event investment to accredited training, employment, enterprise and long-term community infrastructure. Our “From Subsidy to Strategy” proposition sets out how this could work.
Delay has consequences and when legitimate society does not move with urgency, the streets offer their own versions of belonging, status, income and identity. Disillusioned talent can become vulnerable to crime, gangs, extremism and intolerance with devastating human, community and economic costs.
Leadership now means thinking bigger, acting earlier and joining up the systems surrounding young people. Britain does not lack young talent, it lacks a sufficiently coordinated national pathway capable of recognising, developing and investing in it.
Let us move from subsidy to strategy, from placements to purposeful journeys, and from a generation described by an acronym to a generation equipped with hope, opportunity and leadership.
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