What are we doing to our young?

Munchy_Monk went viral recently by asking why so many music concerts are being cancelled.

The usual theories came out for inspection. Maybe the music is worse. Maybe young people no longer want to gather in person. Maybe they prefer consuming life through little glowing rectangles. Perhaps that is why cinemas are struggling too, and why young adults seem slower to buy houses, cars, weddings, prams, the whole caboodle of adulthood.

Then Munchy_Monk kicked the theories into the gutter.

The reason, he said, is not mysterious. “It’s because no one has any ****ing money.”

That was the force of the video. It pierced the fog. Young people are not rejecting adulthood because they are uniquely frivolous, rootless or self-absorbed. Many of them want the same things previous generations wanted: work, homes, relationships, families, lives with shape and dignity.

They just can’t afford the entrance ticket.

If video influencers are not your thing, let me give you Alan Milburn. His landmark report on the world of work for young people has just been published in the UK. It is a damning indictment.

More than one million young people in the UK are not in employment, education or training. They are called NEETs. Eighty-four per cent say they want a job, schooling or on-the-job training. Of today’s 24-year-old NEETs, 45 per cent have never had a paid job.

This is not just a British problem. The International Labour Organization estimates that around 262 million young people globally, one in four, are not in employment, education or training. Most of us do not need a report to feel this. We can see it in our own families, in our neighbourhoods, in the young people sending out applications into a void.

Why is this happening?

The lazy answer is that today’s youngsters are soft, fussy and allergic to work. The better answer is that the first rung has been quietly pulled away.

Entry-level roles are fewer, tougher and more oddly demanding than before. Employers want experience from people who have not yet been allowed to gain any. Recruitment has become more remote, more automated and less human. A young person is now likely to be rejected by a machine before a thinking adult ever sees their name.

AI is adding another squeeze. Its greatest short-term damage may not be mass unemployment, but rather the silent thinning of junior work: the routine tasks through which young people once learned judgment, confidence, discipline and standards. When businesses delete those tasks, they may gain efficiency today and lose their talent pipeline tomorrow.

Then add the cost of hiring. When wages, taxes, compliance and risk all rise together, many employers make the safe choice. They hire someone older, tested, already shaped by work. The young are left outside the gate, told to be more employable by people who no longer wish to employ beginners.

This is how a generation gets blamed for failing to climb a ladder whose lower rungs have been removed.

The UK report warns of a lost generation: young people cut off at the very moment when they should be gaining confidence, skills, work habits, and independence.

I really wonder what we are doing, prioritizing the old before the young, and skewing everything in favour of those already privileged and comfortable. Any society that does not renew itself through its offspring has only one future available to it: oblivion.

Strangling the prospects of the young is the dumbest thing we can do. Our governments, our institutions, our businesses, our thinkers should be preoccupied with this above all else: how to create systems and incentives that give opportunities to the young.

So what do we do? We rebuild the first rung.

Governments should make it easier to hire young people with no track record yet. Use targeted incentives for first jobs, apprenticeships and training roles. Stop pretending every employee arrives fully formed.

Employers should stop deleting entry-level work. Yes, AI can now do many junior tasks. But those tasks were also how young people learned judgment, rhythm, clients, colleagues, deadlines and standards. Remove the tasks, and you remove the training ground.

So redesign the first job. Give young people AI tools, but also mentors. Give them real work, not pretend busyness. Reward managers for growing talent, not just squeezing output. And when full-time roles are not possible, create structured project work that teaches something, pays fairly and opens the next door.

Education must also build bridges into work. Exams are not enough. Every young person should leave with work exposure, practical projects, interview practice and guidance from adults who understand the working world.

And young people must show up too. Effort matters. Habits matter. Mental resilience matters. But it is dishonest to remove the ladder and then scold those left standing on the ground.

What are we doing to our young? Too often, we ask them to become productive while denying them the places where productivity is learned.

A society that locks its young out of useful work is not saving money. It is burning tomorrow’s harvest.

THE SIGNAL IN THE NOISE

Give young people more than lectures. Give them a first rung, a fair chance, and adults willing to teach them the climb.

 

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