A pathway to work

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Young people’s labour market participation has become a central concern for policymakers and employers alike. The government has placed growing emphasis on reversing the rise in the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (Neet) alongside a wider ambition to expand the workforce required for the clean energy transition. An independent review led by Alan Milburn is currently examining the drivers of rising economic inactivity among young people and the effectiveness of existing support, with the final conclusions to be published in summer 2026.

From a supply side, the UK’s transition to net zero creates significant opportunities for job creation in clean energy, retrofit, nature restoration, and wider green supply chains. The government has also previously set an ambition to support 2 million green jobs by 2030 and has emphasised the role of skills and training in delivering this ambition.

Yet the barriers that limit access to these jobs are largely the same barriers that shape the youth labour market more broadly. This report, therefore, treats green jobs as a high-growth opportunity that must be an integral part of the wider agenda to reduce Neet young people. The government’s success in improving young people’s access to green jobs is a stress test of whether the wider skills and employment system can deliver access to good work.

This report contributes to this agenda by focusing on the practical, system-wide conditions that shape young people’s ability to move from interest and aspiration into real labour market outcomes. To understand these barriers in detail, we take a mixed-methods approach that uses the input of young people’s lived experiences through deliberative workshops, interviews with frontline service providers, and an in-depth literature review.

Our report finds that across sectors, including but not limited to green jobs, young people consistently identify interlocking barriers that shape their labour market outcomes. Four key barriers are discussed throughout this report.

First, affordability is the most persistent constraint. While many training routes are nominally free, participation still carries costs related to travel, food, equipment, and foregone earnings. For young people without family support, these costs can make training or entry-level work financially unviable. As a result, opportunities tend to be taken up disproportionately by those with stronger household safety nets.

Second, young people face a structural experience trap. Entry-level jobs often require prior experience, while access to experience itself depends on unpaid placements or informal contacts. This dynamic is particularly exclusionary for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, which includes young people who have been eligible for free school meals, are care-experienced, or are from areas with high levels of deprivation; this reinforces existing inequalities in access to work. It also reveals employers’ risk aversion in hiring young, inexperienced workers.

Third, access to guidance, mentoring, and networks plays a decisive role in shaping outcomes. Careers advice and work experience are uneven in quality and availability, with many young people lacking trusted adults or professional networks to help them navigate pathways into work. Where support exists, it is often fragmented rather than forming part of a coherent journey from school into employment.

Fourth, geography and transport strongly influence opportunity. Many jobs, including those associated with clean energy and retrofit, are locally anchored. Yet young people’s ability to access them is shaped by local provision, transport links, and regional capacity. The green transition intensifies this issue because many roles are local and infrastructure-linked, while specialist training kits and instructors are often concentrated in specific centres. Without attention to place, national programmes risk producing postcode lotteries in access to work and training.

These barriers are acute for the most disadvantaged young people, especially those who are Neet. Many want to work or train but are locked out by a combination of affordability constraints, limited experience, weak guidance, and unstable transitions. Financial transitions are particularly important. Moving into training or entry-level work can interact with the welfare system in ways that leave households worse off, especially when a young person’s status changes as they move out of full-time education. For care leavers and young people in supported housing, the risk of rent shortfalls or arrears at the point of transition can be a powerful deterrent to taking up work or training. Employment support is available through jobcentres and local provision, but access to help with participation costs and referrals into priority training routes is uneven. As a result, some of the young people most in need of support are least likely to benefit from it.

The government has introduced a wide range of initiatives aimed at improving youth employment and skills outcomes. These include reforms to apprenticeships and technical education, workexperience commitments under the recently launched Youth Strategy, targeted employment support and wage subsidies for Neets, and workforce planning linked to clean energy
and retrofit. In addition, changes under the Employment Rights Act 2025 have the potential to improve job quality and security, opening opportunities to jobs with genuine prospects. Taken together, these measures represent genuine progress. However, the evidence suggests they do not yet add up to an end-to-end pathway that young people can reliably navigate. Policies tend to address individual stages, such as training supply or job entry, without consistently resolving the conditions that determine take-up and progression.

The central finding of this report is that outcomes depend less on the existence of specific programmes and more on whether young people can afford to participate, access experience, navigate transitions, and progress into sustained work. There is also a risk of individually focused initiatives, which emphasise individual young people changing their behaviour or adapting to new opportunities, may crowd out the need for policies and programmes to tackle these systemwide barriers to participation and upskilling. Without addressing these conditions, even well designed policies will struggle to reach those most at risk of becoming long-term Neet. The challenge for policy is therefore not to add another initiative to an already long list, but to align existing levers into a coherent offer that works in practice for young people with the least margin for risk.

This report proposes a set of practical recommendations focused on removing the binding constraints identified in the evidence:

1. Make training and early labour market entry affordable through predictable support for participation costs and targeted income stabilisation where needed. Use subsidised employment and work experience as progression pathways, with a clear focus on retention, skills development and onward routes.
2. Strengthen mentoring, guidance, and employer engagement for young people who lack networks, particularly in underrepresented groups and regions.
3. Address geographic barriers by supporting shared training infrastructure, local partnerships, and transport solutions.
4. Review benefit interactions for young people entering apprenticeships and training routes to ensure they can keep money earned from accessing these opportunities, rather than penalising their or household members’ incomes.
5. Ensure employment support routinely covers participation costs and provides clear referrals into priority training pathways. Together, these measures would help ensure that existing policy ambition translates into real, sustained labour market participation for young people, including those currently furthest from work.

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