Work gives purpose. Work gives income. Work gives meaning.
A government-commissioned review has surfaced a quiet arithmetic of neglect at the heart of British social policy: for every pound spent helping young people into work, twenty-five are spent sustaining their absence from it. With nearly a million young Britons disconnected from work, education, and training — the highest proportion in over a decade — former minister Alan Milburn argues the welfare state has confused dependency with care. His review frames this not as a generation's failure of will, but as a civilisational failure of design, one that demands not tinkering but a fundamental reset of how the state relates to its youngest citizens.
- Nearly a million young people — 12.8% of those aged 16 to 24 — have fallen out of work, study, and training, the worst such figure in more than ten years.
- The spending ratio is the sharpest indictment: £25 flows toward benefits for every £1 directed at employment support, a disparity Milburn calls 'shameful' and structurally self-defeating.
- More than half of those inactive young people have stopped looking for work altogether, suggesting the system has quietly normalised their disconnection rather than disrupting it.
- Milburn is pressing for welfare reform even as the Labour government retreats from it under internal pressure, insisting that expecting young people to work is an act of care, not cruelty.
- The full recommendations are still to come, but the trajectory is clear: a reorientation of public investment toward pathways into work and learning, treating employment as the default rather than the exception.
Alan Milburn has a calculation that troubles him. For every pound the government spends helping young people find work, it spends twenty-five keeping them on benefits. The former health secretary, commissioned to investigate why so many young people have dropped out of work and education, calls this disparity shameful. The numbers are stark: 957,000 young people in the UK — 12.8 percent of those aged 16 to 24 — are neither working, studying, nor in training, the highest proportion in more than a decade.
Milburn's review frames this not as a personal failing but as a systemic one. More than half of those young people aren't even looking for work anymore. In his telling, the state has failed them across multiple fronts — welfare, schools, skills, and health — and the machinery meant to move young people toward learning or earning has instead moved them toward dependency. The spending disparity, drawn from DWP and Jobcentre Plus data, measures investment in employment programmes against the outflow in Universal Credit, JSA, PIP, and DLA. The gap reveals a system that has quietly accepted inactivity as its default setting.
He is calling for a complete system reset, and he is unapologetic that welfare reform must be part of it — even as Labour has shelved some planned changes after pushback from its own MPs. "Labour is what it says on the tin," he said. "It's the party of work." He is careful to acknowledge that mental health challenges among young people are real and rising, but argues those diagnoses should not become a permanent excuse for disconnection. He also points to a structural wound: entry-level jobs have been disappearing for twenty-five years, removing the first rungs of the ladder that earlier generations climbed almost without noticing.
Milburn's full recommendations will follow later this year. But the direction is already plain — not punishment, not withdrawal, but a reorientation of the entire system toward work and learning as the expected destination, backed by genuine investment in the routes that lead there. Spending twenty-five times more on benefits than on employment support is not, in his view, compassion. It is a system that has learned to call its own failure by a kinder name.
Alan Milburn has a simple calculation that troubles him: for every pound the government spends helping young people find work, it spends twenty-five pounds keeping them on benefits. The former health secretary, commissioned by the government to investigate why so many young people have dropped out of work and education, calls this disparity shameful. And the numbers behind it are stark. Nearly a million young people in the UK—957,000 to be precise—are neither working, studying, nor in training. That's 12.8 percent of everyone aged 16 to 24, the highest proportion in more than a decade.
Millburn's review, the first part of which was published this week, frames this not as a personal failing but as a systemic one. More than half of those nearly a million young people aren't even looking for work anymore. They've stopped trying. In an interview with the BBC, Milburn was direct about what he sees as the root cause: the state has failed them across multiple fronts. "This is a failure of the welfare system, but it's a failure of the school system, the skills system, the health system," he said. The machinery that's supposed to move young people toward learning or earning has instead moved them toward dependency, with consequences that will ripple through their entire lives.
The spending disparity Milburn uncovered reveals how the system's incentives have become inverted. His calculations, based on Department for Work and Pensions data and Jobcentre Plus figures, measure what goes into core employment programmes against what flows out in Universal Credit, Job Seekers' Allowance, Personal Independence Payment, and Disability Living Allowance. The gap is enormous. For every young person the state tries to push into work, it's spending vastly more to support them while they remain idle. It's a ratio that suggests the system has quietly accepted inactivity as the default.
Millburn is calling for what he terms a complete system reset, and he's being explicit that welfare reform has to be part of it. This is a delicate position within the Labour Party, which has shelved some planned benefit reforms after pushback from its own MPs. But Milburn is unapologetic. "Labour is what it says on the tin," he said. "It's the party of work. Work gives purpose. Work gives income. Work gives meaning." He's arguing that compassion and work are not opposites—that expecting young people to work, even those struggling with mental health challenges, is not cruelty but care.
He acknowledges the real obstacles young people face. Mental health problems among young people are genuine and rising. But Milburn argues these diagnoses shouldn't become excuses for disconnection from the workforce. He also points to a structural problem: entry-level jobs have been disappearing for about twenty-five years. The part-time positions, the paper routes, the first rung on the ladder—they're largely gone. Milburn knows this from his own life. He was sacked from a paper round at thirteen in Newcastle, couldn't get out of bed like any adolescent boy, and failed to deliver. It was the only time he's ever been fired. But he learned something from it: effort and reward are connected. That lesson, he suggests, is harder to come by now.
Millburn's full recommendations will come later this year, but the direction is clear. He's not arguing for punishment or withdrawal of support. He's arguing for a reorientation of the entire system toward work and learning as the default expectation, supported by genuine investment in the pathways that get young people there. The current arrangement—spending twenty-five times more on benefits than on employment support—is not sustainable and not, in his view, humane. It's a system that has accepted failure and called it compassion.
Notable Quotes
This is a failure of the welfare system, but it's a failure of the school system, the skills system, the health system.— Alan Milburn
Welfare reform is absolutely essential and needs to be done. But it's got to be within the context of a wider set of reforms to state institutions.— Alan Milburn
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does Milburn think the spending ratio matters so much? It's just accounting.
Because spending tells you what a system actually values, not what it claims to value. If you're spending twenty-five pounds on benefits for every pound on job support, you're not really trying to move people into work. You're managing their inactivity.
But mental health is real. Young people are struggling. Shouldn't we support them?
Milburn isn't saying we shouldn't. He's saying support shouldn't mean disconnection. He's arguing that work itself—having a role, earning, contributing—is part of what makes people well. The current system treats work and welfare as separate things. He thinks they should be connected.
The jobs aren't there, though. He admits entry-level positions have been disappearing for twenty-five years.
That's the harder part of his argument. He's not denying the structural problem. He's saying we need to fix that too—create those entry points again. But we also can't use the absence of jobs as an excuse to stop expecting young people to try.
Is he blaming young people for not working?
No. He's blaming the state for building a system that makes inactivity the path of least resistance. Young people respond to incentives like anyone else. If the system says "stay on benefits," they will. If it says "we're investing in getting you into work," that's a different message.
What does "system reset" actually mean?
It means you can't just tinker with welfare. You have to change schools, health services, skills training, job creation—the whole ecosystem. Right now each part works in isolation. A young person falls through the cracks between them and ends up on benefits. A reset would mean they're caught and moved forward instead.