The Youth Jobs Crisis Has a New Champion. But Does It Have the Right Tools?

This week the British government appointed Marc Bolland, former chief executive of Marks and Spencer, as lead non-executive director at the Department for Work and Pensions. His brief is straightforward and urgent. Help close the gap between a million young people not in work or education and the employers who need them.

It is a serious appointment for a serious problem.

Close to a million young people in the UK are currently classified as NEET — not in education, employment or training. The Milburn report, published last week, warned that without urgent action that number could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s. One in six young people. A generation at risk of being left permanently behind.

Bolland brings genuine credibility to the role. His charity Movement to Work has already helped more than 200,000 unemployed young people find jobs. He understands employers. He understands scale. And he understands that this problem cannot be solved by government alone.

But there is a question worth asking alongside the announcement. Does the system have the right tools for the job?

The gap nobody is filling

The Milburn report contains a statistic that should stop every policymaker in their tracks. For every £25 the government spends on benefits for young people it devotes just £1 to helping them find work.

That is not a funding problem. That is a priority problem.

And the consequence is stark. Almost half of those who claim a health or disability benefit before the age of 24 are still unemployed or not in education a decade later. The system is not failing occasionally. It is failing consistently and at scale.

Bolland’s appointment signals that the government understands employer engagement is essential. Businesses need to be part of the solution. That is right. But employer engagement addresses the end of the journey — the moment of hiring. What is still missing is something that addresses the beginning.

The moment before the job application. The moment before the training programme. The moment when a young person with anxiety, depression, or simply no sense of direction asks themselves the quiet and devastating question — is there anything out there that is actually for me?

What the system consistently gets wrong

The standard response to youth unemployment involves work programmes, training courses, benefit conditions, and employer incentives. These are all necessary. But they share a common assumption — that young people already know what direction they want to go in and simply need help getting there.

For the young people the Milburn report is most concerned about that assumption is wrong.

Six in ten young people have never had a job, compared with four in ten in 2005. An increasing number are being assessed as unfit to work due to anxiety, depression, and neurodevelopmental conditions. Many have had negative experiences of education, welfare systems, and institutions that were supposed to help them. Trust is low. Confidence is lower.

For these young people the first need is not a job. It is a calm, honest, judgment-free way to explore whether a particular kind of work might suit them. Before the form. Before the waiting list. Before the system gets involved.

The tools that already exist

While Westminster debates the shape of the next work programme, something else is already available.

The UK solar industry needs to double its workforce by 2030. The Warm Homes Plan needs thousands of retrofit coordinators, assessors, advisers, and compliance administrators. The EV sector is short of technicians so severely that owners are waiting six months for repairs. The care sector needs tens of thousands of additional workers that no technology can replace. The AI business operations sector is creating entirely new roles that did not exist five years ago.

These are not future jobs. They are current vacancies. And many of them are accessible to people coming from office backgrounds, customer service roles, or no background at all with the right preparation.

LELAIL was built to be that preparation.

Voice-first so no reading is required. Self-paced so no pressure. Available in over 100 languages so no language barrier. Honest about the boring parts as well as the rewarding parts so no nasty surprises. A personalised completion certificate so every step forward is evidenced.

A young person with social anxiety who cannot face a classroom can sit in their bedroom and spend an hour exploring whether a Solar Operations Assistant role might suit them. A care leaver with no qualifications can try a Retrofit Coordinator taster course and discover that their organisational skills are exactly what the green economy needs. A young person who has been told by the system they have nothing to offer can share LELAIL with their followers and earn real money through the Community Education Partner Programme — learning and earning at the same time.

That is not a work programme. It is something the system has never quite managed to provide. A low-risk, honest, human starting point that meets people where they are.

What Marc Bolland’s summit should discuss

Bolland will convene business leaders to create clear routes into work. That conversation is important and necessary.

But alongside employer engagement, procurement decisions, and incentive structures, there is a simpler question worth putting on the agenda.

What tools are we putting in the hands of young people right now — today — that help them find their beginning?

The Dutch system, which has kept its NEET rate below 5% for over a decade, combines vocational education, personalised welfare, and employer incentives. But at the heart of it is something more fundamental. A belief that every young person deserves to find work that suits them. Not work that fits a programme target. Work that suits them.

A professor who helped design the Dutch system described vocational education as a lifeboat. He told the story of a teacher who found a vulnerable student work in a shoe repair shop. The student said something that stayed with him. It is so important for me to know that society sees the value of me.

That is the sentence at the heart of this crisis. Not skills gaps. Not employer incentives. Not benefit reform. The need to know that society sees the value of you.

LELAIL was built by someone who sat on that step himself. Who knew what it felt like to need a calm starting point and find none. Who built something because he believed that no one should be left behind in the age of AI.

Marc Bolland has been given an important role. The tools to support it already exist.

No One Left Behind.

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