The rapid decline in Saturday jobs like paper rounds could lead to a lost generation unprepared for work, a former Labour minister has warned.
The rite of passage where youngsters work for a few hours a week, learn some basic work skills and earn their own money helps to prepare them for real jobs, says Alan Milburn.
He is heading a government review into youth unemployment and the escalating numbers of teenagers who are not in education, employment or training – so called NEETs.
His findings could even lead to sweeping changes in the benefits system for young people to encourage them to work or train, bringing in a possible Australian-style model.
There, the standard benefits payment for 16 to 22-year-olds – the ‘youth allowance – is dependent on proof of looking for work or full-time study and apprenticeships.
A separate government fund helps with paid work placements of up to six months and provides intensive tailored support such as mentoring to prepare for longer-term work.
In the UK, fewer than one in five 16 to 17 year olds are working compared to half of them at the start of the century, with nearly a million young people aged 16 to 24 qualifying as NEETs in total.
The rapid decline in Saturday jobs like paper rounds could lead to a lost generation unprepared for work, a former Labour minister has warned (stock image)
The rite of passage where youngsters work for a few hours a week, learn some basic work skills and earn their own money helps to prepare them for real jobs, says Alan Milburn (pictured)
The latest statistics also show that three in five of these are not actively looking for work.
In his early findings, Mr Milburn, a health secretary in Tony Blair’s government, believes one of the reasons can be traced back to the ‘longstanding decline’ in Saturday jobs, particularly over the last two decades.
He told The Times today: ‘Previous generations, including mine, were all brought up where most of us had that type of job or had a paper round or whatever.
‘That not only provided youngsters with the opportunity to earn but it also allowed teenagers to learn about what it meant to be in a workplace.
‘They became familiar with things like the discipline of being on time. It’s too lazy to just blame today’s youngsters for not being work ready.’
And he suggested that without experience of a Saturday job or even any work experience at all, what they had learnt at school was not ‘necessarily pertinent for the world of work’, adding:
‘We’ve got to look at both of these issues and we will be.’
He also warned youth employment rates had risen after the pandemic and were still going up.
And vowing to find ‘radical solutions’, he said: ‘If we are to avoid a lost generation we have to find new ways of reversing those trends.’
Shockingly, half of the 219,000 young people aged 16 and 17 who are not in full-time education, are neither working nor actively looking for work while that number was a third ten years ago.
And while overall numbers of all workers employed rose by 9% over the decade, that was in stark contrast to a 6.4% drop in those aged under 17 on payrolls.
Mr Milburn will also look at the issue of the minimum wage for young people, which rose again in the budget, in the review which is due to report back in the spring.
Many economists have pointed the finger at this for deterring employers from hiring young people.
And he will also seek to tackle the rise in young people being diagnosed with poor mental health and neurodivergence and claiming benefits as a result.
A panel of 11 experts, including Baroness Casey of Blackstock, will oversee the review and several businesses and charities have been brought in to advise Mr Milburn.
The goal of the review will be to give every young person the opportunity to ‘learn how to work’, he said.
New measures could include handing out a personal pot of money to allow young people to get into work, according to government sources.
Their benefits could then be dependent on their actions and whether they enrol or otherwise in training or apprenticeships.
‘We need to get away from basically handing out money to poor people to keep them afloat,’ one source said.
However such changes are likely to prove controversial with Labour MPs and Whitehall departments.
The review comes on top of former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield’s report into Britain’s youth unemployment crisis last November.
It showed we lag far behind Northern European countries like the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark in employment rates.
It also warned that if a 22-year-old dropped out of work, the state could incur a staggering £1 million plus over his or her lifetime in welfare payments, lost taxes and NHS costs.
As well as looking at the Australian model where any benefits paid to young people are also substantially lower than adult payments and are reduced in line with parents’ incomes, the review is also expected to look keenly at what is happening in other countries including the Netherlands and Ireland.
Ministers here are already devising plans for a Youth Guarantee Scheme which will introduce some new restrictions to boost employment.
It will give any 18 to 21-year-olds who have spent 18 months without work or study a choice of a six-month paid job placement, training or apprenticeship, with benefits cut back if they do not engage.
It is also likely to see some health benefits removed from under 22s, with the money then reinvested in subsidising wages.
