Dave Martin, 25, lives with his parents in his childhood home just outside the supergrid city of Milton Keynes. His days consist of doing chores around the house to “earn his keep”: walking the dog, mowing the lawn and cooking meals for his family a few times a week. In his free time, he experiments with writing fiction and loses himself in tabletop role-playing games with his online friends. But for the past four years, since he graduated from university, the majority of Dave’s days have been spent endlessly sending off job applications, always to no avail.

“Generally, it’s been five- or six-month stints of active searching. I get increasingly anxious, then I just give up for a month or two before a different kind of anxiety pushes me back towards job hunting,” says Dave. He holds a degree in Environmental Science, but has been applying to any role he can find – baggage handling, kitchen work, barista jobs. “Just today I got a rejection for a supermarket warehouse picker role,” he says.

Dave is far from the only one stuck in this cycle. It is no secret that the job market is in a dire state. Rising employment costs, the advent of AI, and ghost jobs have created a perfect storm of employment scarcity, which young people who are attempting to enter the workforce for the first time are bearing the brunt of. According to a recent government report by Alan Milburn, approximately one million young people across the UK are not in employment, education or training – ‘NEETS’. The number of NEETS is the highest it’s been in 12 years: the Milburn report refers to the situation as a “moral crisis” and paints a bleak picture of a lost, “bedroom generation”. It’s a story, Milburn writes, “that should disturb anyone who cares about the future of young people in this country”.

20-year-old Lily-Rose Bisson, who is from Leeds, estimates that she applied to 200 jobs before she landed part-time work as a waitress – a role she was laid off from not long after her first shift. “The ratio of jobs that you’d apply for and hear back from was just appalling,” she says. “I’ll get an email within the hour of submitting the application saying ‘sorry, but we’re not going to move forward.’” The dead-end process has much to do with the fault of employers using AI to vet applications: on multiple occasions, Lily-Rose has received an automated rejection email within an hour of submitting her CV and cover letter. “I’ve spent almost three hours trying to apply for your business, and you don’t even have the decency to have a real human look through my application and email me back,” she says. 

In Dave’s experience, employers are unwilling to train new staff and the strict requirements for prior experience, even at entry level, have “seemingly clogged the entire world of work where increasingly senior people are doing more junior roles.” It’s far from an unfounded belief: research shows that a third of UK firms are actively hiring older workers due to a concern about younger staff lacking the skills. “It’s so disheartening,” says Lily-Rose. “I just felt so unwanted by society.”

The Milburn report identified mental health problems as central to the crisis: 43 per cent of ‘NEETS’ say that mental health problems are the main reason they are unable to work, up from 24 per cent in 2011. Julie Evans, Head of Media and Communications at Spear, an organisation which helps tackle youth unemployment, says that a decade ago the driving force behind NEET rates was anti-social behaviour, whereas now, social isolation and a sense of malaise are the more common issues. “One young woman told us recently she hadn’t left the house in a year,” says Evans.

“It’s not that we don't want to work and we’re using mental health as an excuse. We want to work, we’re not getting any jobs, and because of that our mental health is taking a hit”

Lily-Rose believes that the unemployment crisis is the cause of poor mental health levels to begin with. “It’s not that we don’t want to work and we’re using mental health as an excuse. We want to work, we’re just not getting any jobs, and because of that, our mental health is taking a hit,” she says. The overriding feeling, she says, is one of dread: “dreading being stuck in this loop of unemployment and dreading not being accepted into the world”.  Most nights, Dave wakes up at four in the morning with an “almost physical” fear that his life is passing him by. “I rarely get back to sleep,” he says. “I spend pretty much the whole time tired enough that my eyes ache.”

Experts have stressed that this crisis will cause long-term repercussions. According to a recent UCL study, being out of work and education from a young age has a ‘scarring’ effect on wages and mental health, lasting into midlife. There is a sense amongst the younger generation that the basic initiations into adulthood, which were the default offerings to previous generations, have been robbed from their hands. “If you’re not earning money, then you can’t do certain things that you would love to, whether it’s start a business or travel or own a house or start a family,” says Catherina, 24, from Brighton, who has been unable to get a full-time job since graduating from university in 2023. 

So what more needs to be done? The second half of the Milburn report is set to be released in the autumn, and it will contain recommendations from the government of how the NEETs crisis can be rectified. Evans says that to tackle the issue, not only do there need to be more government-backed schemes to train young people entering the workforce, but there also needs to be evidence that the schemes currently in place actually work. “Work coaches at the Jobcentre should be given evidence for every support scheme they send young people to – proof that the schemes actually improve a young person’s chances,” she says. 

Dave fears that these concessions might be too little too late, as he surpasses the age bracket of 16-24, in which unemployment is a targeted issue for the government. He defines himself as being part of a “lost micro-generation”. “All the focus seems to be on people younger than 20,” he says. “I feel like there is a tranche of people like me who have missed that first step into careers being left to rot.”

Lily-Rose says that she holds “a lot of anger towards the government for their lack of accountability and lack of care”. “They don’t care about young people. They only care about themselves and [voters in] their age bracket,” she says. Even the term NEET is patronising to some: an interviewee in this BBC video says it should be rephrased to ‘LEET’ – looking for employment, education or training.

Despite it all, Catherina is still motivated with her job search and remains hopeful that the unemployment crisis will be resolved. In the meantime, she keeps herself busy: meeting with friends from her church group, listening to a good podcast, gardening if the weather permits it. Recently, to clear her mind, she did what she calls an “entertainment fast” – abstaining from all forms of media for 24 hours – to quiet her mind. “I haven’t given up and I’m still determined,” she says. “I just think older people need to have more compassion for younger adults.”