One million reasons to act: the barriers facing young people this National Employability Week
July 08, 2026Posted by:
This week is National Employability Week (6th-10th July 2026), led by the charity EmployabilityUK. Each year it brings together businesses, schools, colleges and communities to celebrate talent and tackle the barriers young people face when stepping into the world of work. This year the week has gone national for the first time, with the National Employability Conference held in Birmingham on Wednesday 8th July. It runs alongside Youth Employment Week, the annual campaign led by Youth Employment UK, which shares the same dates and the same purpose: connecting young people with the employers, educators and opportunities that can shape their working lives. Today's Youth Employment Week theme is Opportunity for All, and that is exactly what this article is about.
It could not be better timed. In May, the Office for National Statistics confirmed that just over one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are not in education, employment or training. It is the first time the figure has passed one million since 2013, and it has been rising steadily since 2021. Behind that headline number is a detail that matters even more: the majority of those young people are not unemployed and looking for work. Around 613,000 are economically inactive, meaning they are not actively seeking work or are not able to start, often because of long-term health conditions, caring responsibilities or circumstances that have pushed work out of reach.
The government has recognised the scale of the problem. An independent review into youth inactivity, led by Alan Milburn, published its interim findings in May and reports in full this summer, with a particular focus on mental health and disability as barriers to work. The Youth Guarantee, expanded in March this year, promises every young person access to learning, an apprenticeship or help to find a job. These are welcome steps. But policy alone does not remove barriers. People do, working alongside other people, one conversation at a time.
What the barriers actually look like
The numbers describe the problem. Our delivery teams see what sits underneath it.
Poor health, and poor mental health in particular, has become a major driver of youth inactivity: the Milburn review found the proportion of NEET young people citing a work-limiting health condition has risen by 70% in the last decade, with anxiety, depression and neurodevelopmental conditions now among the defining features of the problem. And these challenges rarely arrive alone. They compound with everything else: the young person who left school without qualifications and now avoids anything that feels like a classroom; the care leaver with no family network to open a door or lend interview clothes; the 19-year-old in a town where the entry-level jobs that once existed have moved online or moved away; the young person with a conviction who assumes, often correctly, that their application will go straight in the bin.
There are practical barriers too, and they are stubbornly ordinary. A bus route that does not reach the industrial estate where the jobs are. No laptop at home to complete an online application. No one in the household currently in work, which means no working routines to observe, no contacts to call on, and no evidence close at hand that work pays off.
And there is a quieter barrier that underpins all of the others: confidence. A young person who has been rejected without feedback a dozen times, or who has been out of education and work for a year, starts to believe the labour market has no place for them. Research consistently shows that time spent out of work when young leaves a lasting mark on earnings and employment prospects for years afterwards. The longer the gap, the harder the return. Early support is cheaper, kinder and more effective than late intervention.
Why this is a social value question
Social value is sometimes treated as a reporting exercise: something to evidence in a bid, a section in an annual report. Youth employment shows what it actually means in practice.
When a business gives a young person their first role, a work placement or even a mock interview, the value created does not stop at that individual. It reaches their household, reduces future demand on health and welfare services, and strengthens the local labour market the business itself depends on. That is social value in its most direct form, and it is measurable: in jobs started, qualifications gained and hours of support given.
This is also where employers stop being the destination and become part of the solution. The organisations making the biggest difference are reviewing entry requirements that screen out potential, offering work experience and guaranteed interviews, and deliberately recruiting from groups other employers overlook. The Social Recruitment Framework, which PeoplePlus supports, gives employers a practical structure for doing exactly this, so that inclusive hiring becomes part of how a business operates rather than a one-off gesture. With social value now embedded in public procurement, it is increasingly part of how contracts are won as well as how communities are strengthened.
What this looks like in delivery
It would be easy to stop at describing the problem. At PeoplePlus, this is our day-to-day work. We know these barriers can come down because we see it happen every week. Take the Restart Scheme, where we support people into employment, including young adults, with dedicated one-to-one coaching, skills training and direct links to employers who are recruiting. In Wales, Jobs Growth Wales+ works with 16- to 19-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training, combining training, work experience and paid opportunities so that a young person's first step into work is a supported one. And in Scotland, our Fresh Start programme in North Lanarkshire supports people aged 16 and over with justice involvement towards employment or self-employment, through one-to-one help from a dedicated key worker or business advisor, because a conviction should not be a life sentence for someone's working prospects.
There is a strong case for employers to be part of this, and it goes well beyond goodwill. People hired from overlooked groups tend to stay: employers in our network consistently find that someone given a genuine chance repays it in loyalty, reliability and commitment, at a time when many sectors struggle to fill roles at all. Inclusive hiring widens the talent pool, reduces the cost of hard-to-fill vacancies, and brings in people whose life experience often makes them better at the job. It counts commercially too, with social value carrying real weight in public sector bids and evidence of inclusive recruitment increasingly part of what wins them. And the benefit reaches beyond any single business: every person supported into work means lower demand on public services, more money in the local economy, and one less young person carrying the scar of unemployment into their thirties.
Within our wider group, charity partner Rise Up works directly with young people aged 16 to 30 who face barriers to employment, providing one-to-one coaching, CV and interview preparation, confidence-building workshops and routes into jobs, apprenticeships and work experience, with a strong focus on Greater Manchester.
A week to start, a year to deliver
National Employability Week and Youth Employment Week matter because they put these issues in front of people who can act on them. But the barriers facing young people are not seasonal, and neither is the response. The work of removing them happens every week of the year, in job centres, training rooms, prisons and workplaces across the UK.
If you are an employer who wants to be part of that work, whether that’s rethinking how you recruit, or partnering with us on a programme in your area, we would like to hear from you. Email: [email protected]
Find out more about National Employability Week at employabilityuk.org and Youth Employment Week at youthemployment.org.uk.
July 08, 2026Posted by:
