The number of young women not in education, employment, or training in the UK neared a decade high this summer, ONS data shows.
The figure for midway through this year was the highest it has been across the same period since 2015, with 422,000 young women not in school or work.
This comes as the government announced a major £725m investment to reform the apprenticeship system with the aim of tackling youth unemployment.
Official statistics recording the number of NEET young people have been criticised as unreliable due to poor survey response rates.
Charity Impetus sought to address these concerns through analysis of an alternative dataset earlier this year, however the most recent data available was from 2019.
Impetus’ analysis found a NEET rate of 14 percent for the period 2011-19, whereas the comparable figure from the ONS was 12.9 per cent.
Figures of 14.9 percent of young women and 15.2 percent of young men were obtained using the ONS data to date.
Data gathered in three equivalent periods shows that this year saw the highest number of NEET young women over the past five years.
Among young men, the highest figures in the past five years were seen across this year and last.
The highest rates of young people in education or work since the pandemic were in 2021.
Since then, the number of NEET young people between April and June of each year has increased 42 percent amongst women and 41 percent among men.
Consistently fewer young women are NEET than young men, a disparity that was most significant early last year, with 114,000 more women in school or work.
What are the barriers?
Despite young men experiencing a higher likelihood of being NEET, analysis by Impetus found, in comparison to other demographic characteristics, gender only had a slight impact on eventual outcomes.
Analysis found that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who have low qualifications, measured by people possessing fewer than five Grade 4 passes at GCSE by age 18, are around 130% more likely to be NEET than the national average.
Although the local authority areas with the least change of young people being NEET are in London, Islington is one of the top 10 areas associated with the highest likelihood nationally.
Concerns remain that a ‘London effect’ sees higher attainment in the capital at GCSE is not felt post-16.
Several initiatives are in place across the capital to engage young people in the economy, supported in recent years by the Mayor’s Young Londoners Fund.
Croydon-based social enterprise Serious About Youth (SAY) runs schemes such as the ConstrUKt programme, which supports young people to find roles within the construction industry.
For SAY’s co-founder and director Rommell Wallace, one of the biggest barriers stopping young people from finding work is a lack of tailored careers guidance.
Wallace said: “Ultimately, we try to work with each young person as an individual.”
The support offered to young people by SAY extends beyond holding workshops in schools, as its staff keep in contact with individuals to support them through career changes later in life.
Wallace added: “We don’t cut young people off after a certain period of time, we continue working with them until they have achieved an outcome they are happy with.
“Well and truly, the door is always open.”
What about the future?
Although government funding has been welcomed, Wallace raised concerns that he had not heard of anyone in the sector being consulted ahead of the move.
Wallace said: “You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
“There are some really good, small, grassroots organisations that would really benefit from the funding, that are already doing the work and already have that trust and those relationships.
A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said that a consultation period would take place following the funding announcement, with £140m allocated to fund work with regional partners.
Whilst the plan for this consultation does not involve consulting grassroots groups directly, they will be represented through intermediaries of larger stakeholders such as mayoral strategic authorities.
Recommendations from Impetus include targeted, local support for young people, with representation also identified as an important factor, modelled by Sister System which works with care-experienced young women through a peer support programme.
A spokesperson for Impetus reiterated concerns regarding the quality of the Labour Force Survey used by the ONS, however, they also added that the upward trend in NEET numbers seen is consistent with other data sources and ‘thus likely to be indicative of some level of reality’.
Featured image credit – MChe Lee, Unsplash
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