Implementing three key reforms to reduce NEET numbers, including an ‘outreach army’ of NEET young people to find and engage the estimated 300,000 ‘hidden NEETs’, would save up to £6bn for the government in the long-term, according to a new report.
The report, 'Closing the Youth Jobs Gap' from youth charity Impetus finds that each additional young person who becomes NEET costs the state an average of £244,000 over their lifetime.*
With more than 1 million young people who are currently NEET, this represents a long-term cost to the country of £244bn, more than the GDP of Greece.
At least 300,000** of these young people are ‘hidden’ - invisible to every service designed to reach them. Recruiting NEET, or formerly NEET, young people into an ‘outreach army’ to find and engage them with support into employment would open doors that Jobcentre appointments never will. It would also offer NEET young people themselves paid training and employment.
This measure is estimated to cost roughly £414m over five years, and - enacted as part of a £570m package of three reforms - would more than pay for itself within five years and could save the government up to £6bn in the long run based on the reduced lifetime costs of each NEET young person.*** This represents a theoretical return on investment of £10.50 for every £1 invested.
Endorsing the report, The Rt Hon. the Lord Blunkett said:
"The challenge before us calls for bold action. But, as this report shows, the cost of inaction is far higher than acting now. Investing in young people is not simply a moral imperative; it is an economic and social necessity. The benefits to the individual, to communities, to the economy and to the public purse repay that investment many times over."
The Rt Hon. the Lord Blunkett,
The three proposed reforms are:
- Launching a major community outreach programme to identify and engage the estimated 300,000 ‘hidden NEETs’ - those not in contact with the welfare and employment support system.
- Creating a new National Data Infrastructure that can identify the real-time NEET/EET status of every young person up to the age of 24.
- Supercharging Youth Hubs as the core support model to get young people back into education, training or employment.
The report contains 14 recommendations in total, designed in consultation with experts across the employment sector, and specifically tailored to reach young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are twice as likely to be NEET and most likely to be left behind by current support.
Susannah Hardyman MBE, CEO of Impetus said:
"There are now more than one million young people not in education, training or employment in this country, each of whom is at higher risk of long-term unemployment, lower wages, health problems, experience of the criminal justice system, or homelessness as a result. Aside from the obvious and unacceptable human cost, this is an expensive problem for the country to have.
When the lifetime cost of neither earning nor learning between the ages of 16-24 is £244,000 per young person, this is also a problem we can’t afford not to fix.
And when we know young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are twice as likely to be NEET, cost effective solutions, designed explicitly around the young people most likely to be left behind are vital.
Our recommendations will not only begin to offset the large cost to the country of the high numbers of NEET young people, but direct resource and attention towards those facing the highest barriers to rectify the structural and systemic barriers which are holding back the potential of a generation.”
Susannah Hardyman, CEO, Impetus
For further information and spokespeople please contact press@impetus.org.uk
*Impetus’s ’Lifetime Cost of a NEET Young Person’ calculation is made up of average estimates of:
- £102,000 in lost tax and National Insurance, reflecting lower lifetime earnings and a shorter working life
- £68,000 in higher welfare costs, across Universal Credit, Housing Benefit, ESA and PIP
- £65,000 in higher NHS costs, reflecting the long-term scarring impact of being NEET on physical and mental health
- £9,000 in higher criminal justice costs
This is a deliberately conservative estimate, sitting below the University of York's long-standing benchmark of roughly £256,000 once uprated for inflation.
**Employment support is built around the welfare system, and it cannot see the roughly half of NEET young people - estimated at between 314,000 to 486,000 - who claim no benefit, and there is no systematic, funded means of finding them, since the current model is almost entirely self-referring.
***This is based on a highly conservative assumption of moving around 25,000 additional young people out of NEET status and into sustained education, employment or training. These figures are drawn from Impetus' cost - benefit model (June 2026). Several of its key assumptions, including the NHS cost multiplier and the rates at which young people are reached and move into sustained EET, are provisional and subject to further evidencing. They should be read as an indicative order of magnitude rather than precise forecasts.
