A million young people want to work. Let's help them.

There are now more than a million young people in this country who are not in work, education or training. The Office for National Statistics confirmed it in May. That’s one in eight people aged 16 to 24.

These aren’t loafers – the Milburn Review found that 84 per cent want a job, training or education. We need to retire the idea that this is a soft generation who can't be bothered. We have quietly eroded opportunities for young people, pulling the ladder up behind us.

The Saturday job is a thing of the past. Apprenticeships for young people have fallen by more than 40 per cent. The days when a young person could hand over a CV to a manager, and be offered a trial shift have been replaced by digital portals, online tests and a recorded interview. Sometimes, the algorithm screens them out before a human ever sees their application.

Milburn calls it a “generational fault line”, and he's right. Six in ten young people who are NEET today have never had a single job. In 2005 that number was four in ten.

I run a start-up. Build Concierge is barely getting going. Yet we have already created opportunities for young people. We were the first “proper” job for youngsters Tirza and Tazeen, who both graduated in 2023, and started out as customer service advisors. In two short years, Tazeen has progressed to become a junior developer while Tirza is now a prompt engineer - both fulfilling careers.

When I say I’m a great believer in giving young people a chance, it’s not just empty words. Half my leadership team here at Build Concierge started working with me when they were kids. People like James Scully, who started working for me at Masternaut aged 18, is now a director of sales. My Chief Operating Officer Simon Field started working with me at BigChange when he was a wide-eyed 21-year-old. Unlike his friends who got jobs doing menial tasks or making the tea, he was coming to sales meeting and meeting customers – straight in at the deep end. I asked him about the impact of that experience when he was so young, and he told me: “It’s shaped my whole life”.

I'll be honest, it’s not easy hiring young people today. But I still do it.  Where I can’t hire, I offer work experience. Parents, this is where you come in. You should be out there advocating for your kids, asking friends and people in your network about opportunities. We have one young person starting work experience in July who is the son of a Build Concierge customer. It never hurts to ask!

The government has to play its part too. The cost of taking on a young worker has gone up by around £4,000 a year, according to the Centre for Policy Studies. After last year's Budget, more than 30 per cent of employers said they expected to run with fewer staff. Minimum wage rises mean a 19-year-old now costs nearly as much as someone with five years’ experience.

The firms that have historically given young people their first start are the ones getting hit hardest of all. Construction, drainage, roofing, heating, maintenance – the sectors I build software for. Look at the latest S&P Global figures and it's grim reading. Construction output is falling at its fastest pace for six years, and confidence is as low as it was going into the autumn Budget. These are not businesses sitting on spare capacity to take a punt on an untested teenager. 

Milburn puts the cost of nearly a million NEET young people at around £125 billion a year. That's more than we spend on educating the entire country. For every single pound we put into helping a young person into work, we spend roughly £25 keeping them on benefits.

There is no easy fix. Young people today aren’t the same as previous generations. People working in this space says they’ve never seen more chronic mental health conditions amongst a cohort of this age. Many spent formative years under lockdown, are suffering the impact of the social media deluge, and families now have the added stress of the cost of living crisis.

But I’m here to say that Build Concierge will keeping giving young people a start. A proper job in a real, fast-moving business, which is about the best business education there is. If the government decides to support business owners like me, and give us some support, I’ll double down. It takes a lot to manage and mentor a young person and the government should provide funding for a manager whose whole job is to work with these young people and help them develop and stay in work.  

If you're in government, or you're a fellow founder, or you run a trade or service business and you actually want to make this happen rather than just nod along, my door is always open. Let's work out how to send the ladder back down for our young people before they forget how to climb.