Youth unemployment report chief rejects ‘snowflake generation’ label as he calls for ‘whole system reset’ over crisis

Youth unemployment report chief Alan Milburn has rejected the notion that a “snowflake generation” is responsible for Britain's youth unemployment crisis.

The former Labour Health Secretary, who is leading an investigation into young people not in work, training or education (Neets), declared that a “whole system reset” was required to fix the issue.

Mr Milburn was speaking to GB News as it was announced that youth joblessness has shot to a record post-pandemic high.

An estimated 1.012 million people aged 16 to 24 were considered Neets between January and March 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This figure was up 89,000 from a year earlier and 55,000 from the previous three-month period.

“The easiest thing to do with an issue like this, which is complex, is to say there's one thing to blame,” the former Health Secretary began.

“Blame the smartphones, blame the young people, blame the employers, blame the Government. It's more than that.

“There's got to be a big national effort to ensure that this generation of young people get the same opportunities as my generation, and that was an opportunity to get into work. That is what is missing today,” he insisted.

“The question that we've got to ask is, is the system set up to enable them to do so?

“My answer is it's trying to solve yesterday's problem.

“Yesterday's problem was all about youth unemployment. And of course, there is still too much of that. But this is a different question. It's a different problem.

“It's a question of youth detachment from the labour market,” Mr Milburn explained.

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“If you have 6 in 10 of these young people who are not even looking for work because they've given up on the idea of getting a job, the solution must be multi-pronged”

“It is not a series of individual reforms that is needed. It's a whole system reset.”

To that end, the former Health Secretary was keen to address the perception of a “snowflake generation” leading to youth detachment from the job market.

He said: “I go around the country, you talk to young people putting in dozens, sometimes hundreds of job applications, never getting a response.

“It's the silence that kills. It dents their confidence. It kills their hope.

“The polling that we've done amongst young people, these people who are Neet, 84 per cent of them want to be in a job.

“It's not a shortage of effort on their part. It's a shortage of opportunity."

He declared that the system had been a “springboard” for those people, reiterating: “These young people want to work.”