Why Employers Hold the Key to Solving the NEET Crisis
Early careers has been in the headlines again. The Milburn Report recently highlighted that nearly one million 16–24 year olds in the UK are currently not in employment, education or training. It's a sobering figure, but for those of us working in this space, it isn't a surprising one.
The debate that's followed has largely focused on what government should fund, what schools should teach, and what young people themselves should do differently. All of that matters. But one voice is, once again, conspicuously quiet in the conversation: employers.
I want to change that and I think the evidence now exists to make a compelling case.
What Welsh Employers Told Us
Earlier this month, I launched Talent Yfory, Wales' Early Careers Social Value Index. As part of the research, we asked 50 Welsh employers a straightforward question:
Where do you believe the biggest responsibility lies for preparing young people for work?
45% said the education system. 15% said individuals themselves. 40% said shared responsibility.
Whilst the latter is encouraging, not a single employer selected themselves.
What makes that finding particularly striking is who was in the room. These weren't businesses with no stake in early careers; the overwhelming majority were already running structured programmes like apprenticeships and graduate schemes. They were invested, engaged, and well-intentioned. And yet, when asked directly about responsibility, employers collectively pointed elsewhere.
That's not a criticism. It reflects a wider cultural assumption that has built up over decades; that preparing young people for work is something that happens before they arrive. But the evidence suggests the opposite is true.
The Wales Context
Wales presents a particular set of challenges and opportunities when it comes to early careers. The economy is heavily SME-dominated, and many businesses operate with lean teams and limited capacity for structured workforce development.
There's no shortage of public investment flowing into employability and skills initiatives across Wales, and some of it absolutely creates positive outcomes. But too often the system becomes dependent on funding cycles rather than changing employer behaviour in any lasting way. Employers hire when funding is available, and when it ends, the structural issues remain; poor retention, inconsistent pathways, and unequal access to opportunity.
If we keep treating early careers as a funding issue rather than a workforce development issue, little fundamentally changes.
What the Evidence Shows
The Talent Yfory data offers a clear signal: structure matters.
Apprenticeships and graduate programmes consistently outperformed standard entry-level roles on retention, progression, and wellbeing. In social value terms, apprenticeships delivered around £14,000 per candidate annually. Graduate programmes delivered £10,000. Unstructured entry-level roles delivered £7,000.
The gap is significant and it has nothing to do with organisation size. One employer in the research achieved 100% retention with fewer than 50 employees. What they had wasn't a dedicated early careers team or a large HR function. What they had was intentionality.
Structure, in this context, means clear onboarding, a named mentor or buddy, regular check-ins, defined progression criteria, and protected development time. It's a deliberate decision to build the scaffolding rather than leave new starters to find their own footing. Any employer, at any size, can do this.
We've Been Here Before
It's worth pausing on the history. Labour's New Deal in the late 1990s tackled very similar challenges, moving over 250,000 young people into employment. On paper, the outputs were strong. But by 2001, around 33,000 participants had already returned to long-term unemployment because too little attention had been paid to what happened after people entered work.
We still make the same mistake today. We measure outputs; how many people entered work, how many programmes were funded, how many placements were created. We don't measure outcomes; did people stay? Did they progress? Did they build the confidence, stability, and purpose that comes from genuinely being developed?
Milburn's report references a growing "quitting culture" amongst younger workers. I'd push back on that framing. In many cases, what looks like a generational mindset issue is actually a structural design failure; weak onboarding, unclear progression, and workplaces that haven't made a genuine commitment to developing the people they've hired. The problem often isn't young people. It's the infrastructure around them.
What Needs to Change
The employers getting this right aren't treating early careers as a recruitment exercise or a tick-box exercise. They're treating it as long-term workforce infrastructure; something they invest in, iterate on, and take genuine pride in.
Wales has the policy architecture to support this shift. The Well-being of Future Generations Act, the Social Partnership Act, and regional RSP investment all create conditions for employers to act differently. The levers exist.
And the return is measurable. The same employers surveyed in Talent Yfory reported productivity scores of 7.5 out of 10 for apprentices and 8.5 out of 10 for graduates. When you invest properly in early careers talent, the outcomes speak for themselves.
The most impactful pathways I've seen across my career aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones designed around real workforce needs, by employers who've made a deliberate choice to bring young people in and genuinely develop them.
That's what moves the dial, not just getting young people into jobs, but building the conditions for them to stay, grow, and contribute long-term.
