Mayors across England should be given greater powers to tackle the youth unemployment crisis and prevent “long-term scarring” in regions outside London, the government’s jobs tsar has said.
Alan Milburn, who is leading a major review into growing inactivity among Britain’s young people, said Whitehall alone could not solve the problem.
The majority of the almost 1 million young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs) are in the north and the Midlands. Eight of the ten local authorities with the highest number of NEETs are located in these two regions.
In an interview with The Guardian, Milburn said: “Local authorities and mayors have an absolutely critical role to play because they have convening power – they can bring together schools, universities and employers in an area.
“They have some legal powers. I think we’ll see if those legal powers go far enough.”
The former Health Secretary added: “They have some powers over education, but there is a real question about whether they need to have more responsibilities to reduce NEET rates, more responsibilities in terms of skills and employment support, because if this is to be addressed as a problem it needs to be addressed both locally and nationally.”
The latest official figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that unemployment rose to 5.2% in the last quarter of 2025, the highest rate since the beginning of 2021. Young people have been hardest hit by this rise, with 16% of people aged 16-24 unemployed, almost an 11-year high.
In the northeast, 17.3% of young people do not work, study or receive training, a figure much higher than the national average. In Yorkshire and Humberside, 16.8% of young people are NEETs.
Milburn said he had been “horrified” to learn that 45% of 24-year-old NEETs have never had a job, and said this would have a “long-term scarring effect” on their lives.
The social mobility expert has promised there will be no “no-go” areas for his inquiry, which will publish an interim update in May ahead of its full recommendations in September. It will examine the role of the welfare state and the NHS in youth unemployment.
He said his review team was in “very active conversations” with mayors and local authorities about “how we can make sure they are very active participants in solving this problem.”
A panel of health, business and policy experts, including former John Lewis boss Charlie Mayfield, former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane and social welfare expert Dame Louise Casey, will help draw up recommendations.
During a visit to an adult employment center in Bradford, Milburn said he was trying to “ignite a movement for change” beyond Westminster on youth unemployment.
Asked if he was concerned that the economic shocks of the Middle East conflict would derail the government’s domestic agenda, including tackling the youth unemployment crisis, Milburn said the issue was the most “visceral” he had examined in three decades in public life.
“It taps into a deep sense of concern and even fear among the British public, and the job of politicians is to allay that fear and, frankly, provide some hope for the future,” he said.
“I’ve never encountered anything like it in the 30 or whatever years I’ve been involved in politics and public policy. This is of more importance to the public than any issue I’ve ever dealt with.
“Although this is a cohort of millions of young people, what worries the public is the generational challenge that this generation of young people is worse off than their parents or grandparents, and it is the first time in a hundred years that this has been the case.
“There is a fear in British society that the contract we had (that each generation would do better than the last) has been broken.”
