A million young people aren’t in a job or training. Britain has a problem

In her budget Rachel Reeves will be expected to flesh out her promise of a ‘youth guarantee’.
Photograph: Stockbroker/Alamy

Almost a million young people are not in education, employment or training. Employers are freezing their hiring plans. Unemployment is at a four-year high. Not all is right in the UK jobs market, and the outlook is getting worse.

Typically it takes a full-blown recession to spark the type of growth in unemployment that Britain is witnessing today. About 100,000 jobs have been lost from company payrolls in the past year, and the official jobless rate has hit 4.8%, up from 4.1% a year earlier. More than 9 million working-age adults are neither in employment nor looking for a job.