How serious is Burnham?
Dave Gardner
The Milburn Report on getting young people into work was published as an interim report in May 2026 with a final report to follow within weeks. The interim report addresses the very serious problem of young people aged between 16 and 24 who are not engaged in training, education or employment – the so-called NEETS. Their existence is a major social and economic problem which the country has persistently failed to address.
The most recent official data shows that 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the April to June 2026 period. The recently published interim Milburn Report supposedly addresses the problem of reducing this number by providing a diagnosis of the problem. Note: not eliminating it. As far as the government is concerned a reduction of a few percentage points would represent a triumph. But tinkering at the edges is a false economy. The costs of having 13% of 16-24 year olds NEET is colossal and the costs of enabling them to contribute to society manageable with the potential for stimulating economic growth. Let’s look at the numbers. The estimates provided below represent the lost potential and the additional burdens created by the NEET period. Here are the estimates and their sources. First, for individual young people who are NEET.
| Perspective | Estimated Lifetime Cost (GBP) | Key Components & Source |
| Cost to the State (Fiscal) | ~£244,000 | Average lifetime cost per young person who becomes NEET, as estimated by the youth charity Impetus. This includes: – £102,000 in lost tax and National Insurance – £68,000 in higher welfare costs – £65,000 in higher NHS costs – £9,000 in higher criminal justice costs |
| Cost to the State (Alternative) | ~£240,000 | The UK Government’s own “ceiling estimate” for the lifetime public finance impact of a period NEET between ages 18-24. This is considered a conservative estimate. |
Estimates of the annual fiscal cost (assuming a 50 year life span for someone who is currently NEET) would be: £4, 708, 800,000.
Let’s now look at the Milburn Report’s estimate of annual aggregate costs of 16-24 year olds who are NEET for six months or more. The numbers are even more startling.
Summary costs of young people NEET
| Category | Element | Total annual cost |
| Economic | Direct economic potential lost | £38 billion |
| Economic | Scarring economic potential lost | £63 billion |
| Public finance | Direct tax revenue lost | £3.2 billion |
| Public finance | Increased health spending | £0.2 billion |
| Public finance | Direct benefit spend on out-of-work benefits | £3.2 billion |
| Public finance | Scarring tax revenue and benefit spend | £15 billion |
| Social | Direct wellbeing impacts | £2.7 billion |
| Total | – | £125 billion |
Source: Young People and Work Interim Report: Analytical Annex
So allowing young people to become and remain NEET costs the UK and its economy £125 billion a year.
If the state were to employ all these young people on the minimum wage, the annual cost, including national insurance and pensions, would be nearly £25 billion per annum. So the estimated gain to the UK economy taking away the annual fiscal cost of being NEET from the gross cost of job creation would be £100 billion per annum. In providing these figures we are taking a strictly utilitarian attitude of calculating the cost to the nation’s finances excluding the human and social cost of being left on the scrapheap.
Some of this gain arises from the boost that employing NEETS gives to the economy. Using Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) multipliers, the addition to GDP would be nearly £15 billion in the first year, representing an initial boost to GDP of 0.5%. Given the current estimate annual growth rate for 2027 (using IMF and OECD estimates) of between 1.2% and 1.3%, this would represent a significant boost to the UK’s annual growth rate. So the initial annual net cost to the state of implementing such a measure would be offset by renewed economic vitality and an improved fiscal position. We are happy to prop up the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which provides us with no benefit whatsoever and puts the British population in harm’s way to the tune of roughly £32 billion since 2022. To repeat, we are suggesting that, on the government’s own estimates, the net annual economic gain in employing all our NEETS would be £100 billion, four times the cost of investing in NEET employment programmes, based on figures supplied to the Milburn Report by government agencies. The growth rate due to employing NEETS will taper off in the second year, but there will be further annual cohorts until the problem is decisively addressed.
Direct employment of NEETS by the state would therefore largely eliminate the problem of chronic youth unemployment and provide a much needed workforce to help repair degraded public spaces and to do other necessary socially useful work. John Maynard Keynes once suggested that to get the unemployed to be paid for digging holes and filling them again would bring the UK greater economic benefit than paying them to stay idle. Our scheme would give young people a lifeline towards becoming members of society. To get longer term benefits from state expenditure of this kind careful thought would need to be given to the provision of satisfying and productive work and the vocational education and training needed to ensure that young people had the know-how to participate in the economy. But the urgent question now is to get young people off the scrapheap. The final Milburn Report will be tinkering at the edges of a massive social problem if it does not take up the suggestion above.
The inevitable bleat will arise: ‘where will the money come from?’, a question never asked when aid is shipped off to Ukraine or to some other pet imperialist project. The answer is that the Bank of England creates the money in Treasury accounts and ministers decide what is the most effective way of putting that money to good effect, probably by involving local authorities in preparing plans to repair their public spaces, housing stock and other amenities that are falling into disrepair, not to mention providing care and other needs to the community. As John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said: ‘if we can do it, we can pay for it’.
At the moment, the Burnham government doesn’t want to do it.
To read the interim Milburn Report, go to:
