THE Office for National Statistics published its latest report last week on the number of young people aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment, or training (NEETs). The figures show a marginal recent improvement: in January to March, there were an estimated 923,000 NEETs, down from 930,000 during the same period last year. But there is no getting away from the fact that nearly one million young people — one in eight of their peers — are in this position. More are men (13.2 per cent) than women (11.7 per cent). Many are well qualified: the Youth Futures Foundation suggests that 10.6 per cent of NEETs (around 90,000 young people) are graduates.

Factors behind this dispiriting trend are multiple. Government statistics show a marked rise in long-term sickness among young people in the past three years. Between 2016 and 2023, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds claiming personal independence payment (PIP) on the grounds of psychiatric conditions almost trebled. According to the Department for Education, almost one in five NEETs in 2023 had a mental-health condition.

Some of the underlying causes are ascribed to the pandemic, but experts also point to years of underfunding for employment support. The Government — aware that the failure to tackle this issue will hinder the economy as well as cause lasting damage for an entire generation — has various measures, such as its Youth Guarantee scheme, intended to move young people into work or training. “No one will be left on the scrapheap,” the Minister for Employment, Alison McGovern, promised earlier this year.

Turning this round will be a long and complex process. It is also inseparable from other problems. It is well established that the seeds of opportunity — and its opposite — are sown at a young age, which makes it all the more pressing that the Government deliver on its manifesto pledge of a Child Poverty Strategy and ensure that it is effective. This has already been delayed, and is now expected in the autumn. Meanwhile, shockingly, three in ten children in the UK today are living below the poverty line.

Child poverty, as the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently said, is “a scar on our national conscience and a stain on the soul of the country”. As Christians, we are called to speak up for the poor, and the Church has been active for many years in its calls for an end to child poverty. Faith leaders recently called for the strategy to be “bold and ambitious” (News, 28 March); and Christian charities have repeatedly called for an end to the two-child limit and benefit cap. The latest figures for NEETs are a reminder of why there should be no let-up in this campaign.