A new report has landed with the thud of a wet rag against Whitehall's smug face. One in six young people, it warns, will be neither in work nor training within five years unless something is done. Something, presumably, more effective than the ritual sacrifice of a job centre duck. This isn't a report. It's a prophecy. A gloomy, statistic-laden prophecy that reads like the plot of a dystopian Netflix series nobody asked for.
Let's parse the numbers, shall we? One in six. That's not a niche problem. That's the entire audience of a Love Island reunion. That's the kind of figure that makes economists wring their hands and politicians deploy the word 'aspiration' like a tranquilliser dart. But ask any actual young person, and they'll tell you: the gig economy is a euphemism for 'we'll pay you in exposure and leftover sandwich triangles'.
The report's authors, the usual suspects in sensible spectacles, suggest more apprenticeships. More training. More 'pathways to success'. As if the problem were a lack of maps rather than a yawning chasm where stable employment used to live. Let's be honest: the current system is a game of snakes and ladders with no ladders and snakes made of zero-hour contracts.
Meanwhile, the government's idea of intervention is to tell teenagers to 'just learn to code' while simultaneously slashing further education budgets. It's like telling someone to fix a leaky roof by handing them a colander and a pat on the back. And what of the lucky one in six? They'll be the future statisticians of this very report, a self-fulfilling prophecy carved in benefit forms.
The real scandal isn't the numbers. It's the vacuum of imagination. Every young person knows that the world of work has dissolved into a swamp of precarious gigs and unpaid internships. We need a revolution, not a gentle report. We need to nationalise job creation, ban unpaid labour, and maybe, just maybe, admit that 'aspiration' tastes like ash when you can't afford rent.
In conclusion: the youth are not lost. They're simply waiting for a system that isn't actively trying to bury them under a pile of spreadsheets and platitudes. As for the report? File it alongside the others. It'll make good kindling for the bonfire of our certainties.
