Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images The Neet crisis has been widely discussed, and with good reason. More than one million young people in Britain, aged 16 to 24, are not in employment, education or training. These years are crucial: missing this window can have long-lasting effects on earnings and employment prospects. Worse still, the proportion of kids in this desperate condition has been rising fast: from 12 per cent at the end of 2023, to a new high of 13.5 per cent in Q1 2026. The UK’s Neet rate has risen while many European countries have reduced theirs, leaving the UK among the worst performers in Europe, with only Romania recording a higher rate in recent comparisons. The crisis Andy Burnham knows we’ve got a problem. But to fix it, he’ll need to know why so many young people seem t