Young less likely to work if they live with parents, says jobs tsar, as number

Young people living with their parents are less likely to work, Labour’s jobs tsar warned yesterday as figures showed nearly a million are languishing outside the education system or workplace.

Alan Milburn, who is leading a government review into youth unemployment, said the higher proportion staying at the ‘house of mum and dad’ was partly to blame.

It came as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 957,000 people aged 16 to 24 were classified as not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the last quarter of 2025.

That was up from 946,000 in the previous three months, stoking fears of a ‘lost generation’.

It follows figures last week showing youth unemployment is at a record high of 16.1 per cent. The wider unemployment rate of 5.2 per cent is the highest in five years.

Labour’s raid on employer national insurance and increases in the minimum wage for the under-21s has widely been blamed for the crisis – with even the Bank of England’s chief economist saying this week that the policies are taking a grim toll on the young. 

On Thursday, Mr Milburn was asked whether he thought living with parents made it less likely for young people to try to find work.

‘It strikes me as yes, and I think we, everybody, talks about the Bank of Mum and Dad as well, isn’t it? Sometimes even when kids leave they boomerang around back,’ he told Times Radio.

957,000 people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training (NEET)

The former Labour Cabinet minister said that parents and grandparents were becoming worried that those in their 20s ‘maybe are not going to do as well as we’ve done’.

He said it was ‘the first time that’s really happened in a century and that is about the fear of not being able to get a decent job, the fear of not being able to own your own home, all of those things, what social media is doing, the AI revolution to come’.

Mr Milburn’s comments conjure the image of older generations fretting anxiously as their grown-up children slouch in front of daytime TV or play on games consoles, resigning themselves to the prospect of a life on benefits.

And he admitted that policies such as the hike on employer NI – which makes it costlier to hire part-time or low paid staff – could be making the problem worse.

‘We’ve got to look at these factors,’ he said, ‘Every time an employer takes on a young person it’s always a risk because they’re unproven.’

Yesterday’s NEETs figures extend the dismal decline in the jobs market under Labour. The figure has not fallen below 900,00 since Labour came to power. It has not been above a million since 2013.

Tory business spokesman Andrew Griffith said: ‘It is astonishingly complacent of Labour not to care as the number of people not in education or employment heads for one million. A lost generation we can ill afford.’

And Reform UK’s education and skills spokeswoman Suella Braverman said the figures were a ‘damning indictment’ of policies that for years have pushed teenagers towards universities that land them with ‘crippling debt’ rather than vocational training, apprenticeships and skilled trades.

Critics say Labour is now pricing young people out of work. It has sharply increased the minimum wage for 18-20 year olds, which will rise to £10.85 per hour from April. The rate for the rest of the adult workforce will rise to £12.71.

The government has pledged to bring the rates into line to create a single adult rate though reports suggest it could delay the move amid fears about the impact on youth unemployment.

The Resolution Foundation, Labour’s favourite think-tank said that, with Britain ‘perilously close’ to NEETs hitting a million for the first time in 13 years, the government should ‘pause further alignment of youth minimum wage rates until youth unemployment is falling’.

Hugh Osmond, the former Pizza Express boss, said: ‘The employment numbers are now the biggest concern in the UK, or should be.’

Labour’s NI raid and minimum wage policy were ‘both big contributors to this problem’, he said.

New figures today from market research firm GfK revealed that the dismal jobs picture is taking its toll as consumer confident slumps.

‘With fewer entry-level opportunities available, those on lower incomes are already feeling the strain, and this trend risks undermining the typically more optimistic outlook held by younger age groups,’ said Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK.