Our 2025 Impetus Leadership Academy (ILA) panel, titled 'From insight to impact: tackling youth unemployment through the lens of race', discussed how government should tailor employment support for different groups of young people and the role youth voice can play in shaping solutions to youth unemployment.

The annual ILA panel event brings together diversity experts, funders and professionals from a range of sectors to share best practice, enabling leaders to learn and network.

Below is a summary of the key talking points from the discussion.

Why diverse leadership matters in youth employment

Amira Ismail, a member of the 2025 ILA cohort, shared how the programme supports leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds – leaders like herself – to progress in the youth employment and education sectors. As Regional Programmes Manager at EY Foundation, Amira designs and delivers work experience programmes for young people facing disadvantage and from ethnic minority backgrounds. She discussed why this is crucial not just for personal development, but the sector as a whole.

Amira explained that one of the very first institutions young people interact with is the education system; NEET status doesn’t begin at 16, but with a young person’s experience in school.

Diverse leaders must progress into positions where young people can see those who look like them, who understand their lived experience, and who can help them imagine a future that feels possible. Amira said this allows young people she works with to “dream bigger.” Having diverse leaders in the youth employment and education spaces means creating a more inclusive and affirming environment for young people from ethnic minority backgrounds too. 

This is why the ILA is so important: it supports talented leaders from underrepresented backgrounds to progress in a sector where access to opportunity has not been evenly distributed, through technical masterclasses, networking with sector professionals, and learning from each other’s experiences.

But creating a space for leaders from ethnic minority backgrounds to progress is only one part of the puzzle. The next part of the event featured a panel discussion on how insights from our tenth Youth Jobs Gap report can be taken to create meaningful, long-term, and widescale impact.

Ensuring evidence leads to action

Of nearly one million young people who are NEET, certain groups face higher barriers to earning or learning. For instance, young people from Black Caribbean and from Mixed White and Black Caribbean backgrounds have a higher likelihood of being NEET than those from other ethnic groups, even when they do not face economic disadvantage. This is why looking at the youth unemployment crisis through the lens of race is crucial.

While there is data on young people’s NEET status and characteristics, the first-hand experience of young people from minoritised backgrounds is still under-researched, said Ayesha Baloch, Senior Policy Advisor at Impetus.

Our Youth Jobs Gap research shows people have very different experiences of systemic racism. For instance, Pakistani young people have very different NEET outcomes to Bangladeshi young people, even though they may experience similar levels of poverty and often live in similar areas. Recognising these nuances and putting in time towards understanding what's working for different young people is the first step to ensuring evidence leads to right action.

Even with evidence, which can help government “get things over the line”, just focusing on numbers means action can be delayed – partly because the burden of evidence from government is very high. Presenting water-tight evidence to secure funding is difficult. But the consistently high numbers of young people who are NEET shows that there are times when there's value in lowering the burden of evidence, to ensure action.

Balancing tailored and universal employment support

One-size-fits-all solutions are not enough for addressing the gap within and between groups – what works for a British Pakistani man in Manchester won’t work in the same way for an Irish Traveller woman from East London.

Similarly, there is nuance even within the same ethnic group as ethnicity and socio-economic factors can intersect to disproportionately affect certain groups of young people. For instance, government data often conflates ‘White’ ethnic groups into one, but those from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds are more likely to be NEET than other White groups, even when they are not from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Because different White groups, who have large gaps in outcomes, are conflated into one broad group, it can lead to assumptions that White British people who aren’t from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller backgrounds have worse outcomes than they actually do. In this way, rolling out one-size-fits-all interventions are just not scalable – or even helpful – for communities who face such significant disadvantage, said Grace Preston, previously Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer at The Traveller Movement.

Therefore, a two-pronged approach to employment support is necessary:

1. Universal Support: A national baseline framework to gather "what works" data
2. Tailored Support: Giving local authorities and job centres the funding and agency to to gather nuanced data for communities with the highest likelihood of being NEET

This two-pronged approach can create small step changes for helping government decide what works best and how resources should be allocated to areas and communities who need it most.

Meaningful engagement with young people when shaping policy

How can policymakers gain meaningful evidence on what works, specifically for the young people facing the highest barriers to employment? Meaningfully engaging with the young people themselves might just help.

Support like apprenticeships or work experience can be a crucial aspect of employment support. If young people are asking for internships to learn employability skills, “why aren’t young people the ones leading policy on what they want?”, asked Ayesha.

Umar agreed. Policymakers and organisations need to engage with young people at their level and through their interests. Young people get 50 rejections just to get one internship, so if they’re getting rejected to even get work experience, it reveals there are deep issues embedded in the employment system which fundamentally must be addressed.

Finally, interventions just by themselves aren’t enough. Representation matters. Part of this means “having someone who looks like you, who understands the vulnerability and the difficulty that comes with being racialised, and who you trust, because they understand that very specific part of your experience,” said Ayesha. We must not underestimate how important that is for young people, as Amira’s speech reminds us.

What did we learn?

'From insight to impact: tackling youth unemployment through the lens of race' revealed that:

1. Recognising nuances within data is crucial to ensuring that evidence leads to action. 
2. There are times when evidence thresholds for government funding should be lowered to speed up action.
3. There's a place for youth voice in policy-making. Government can create tailored, wraparound support for young people who need the most support by meaningfully engaging with them.
4. Representation allows young people to "dream bigger".