How to get nearly one million young people into work. Burnham to give mayors powers to help ‘lost generation’ of Neets. The regional devolution plan will shift Whitehall budgets to local authorities as unemployment among young people hits record high across the country.
The story is about a significant proposed shift in how the UK tackles youth unemployment and economic inactivity. Rather than Whitehall departments running most employment support, Andy Burnham is proposing to devolve much of that responsibility to regional mayors and local councils.
The immediate focus is the UK’s growing population of young people who are NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training). There are now around 957,000 people aged 16–24 in this category—almost one million, or roughly one in eight young people. The UK now has one of the highest youth inactivity rates in Europe.
The proposal includes several key elements:
- Responsibility for helping young people into work would move from central government to regional mayors and councils.
- Local leaders would have greater control over employment support budgets.
- Support would be integrated locally across education, health, skills, housing and employers, rather than split across multiple national agencies.
- The aim is prevention rather than simply paying benefits after people become economically inactive.
The thinking behind this is that local leaders know their labour markets better than Whitehall. A mayor in Greater Manchester, for example, knows which employers are recruiting, where transport barriers exist, what apprenticeship opportunities are available, and where mental health or housing issues are preventing young people from working.
The article says Burnham supports recommendations from a forthcoming report by Alan Milburn, which argues that the current system is fragmented across multiple agencies and lacks clear local accountability.
The economic case is substantial. Long-term youth inactivity is estimated to cost the UK economy around £125 billion per year through lost productivity, lower tax receipts and higher welfare spending. The proposal argues that investing in getting people into work is likely to reduce benefit costs more effectively than simply tightening welfare rules.
From an Academy of Life Planning perspective, there is an interesting connection.
The proposal recognises that getting someone into work is rarely just an employment problem. It often involves mental health, confidence, skills, transport, housing, caring responsibilities, finances and local opportunity. In other words, it reflects a more whole-person approach than traditional job-centre models.
Where AoLP would probably extend the argument further is around human agency. Employment programmes often focus on placing people into available jobs. Total Wealth Planning would ask a broader question:
What combination of a person’s human capital, interests, relationships, financial position and local opportunities enables them to build a sustainable and meaningful life?
That shifts the objective from simply reducing the NEET statistics to helping people develop lasting capability and independence.
So while Burnham’s proposal is primarily about devolving public services, it shares some philosophical ground with our work: moving decision-making closer to people, recognising local context, and treating individuals as more than just recipients of interventions. The difference is that AoLP starts with restoring personal agency, whereas this proposal starts with redesigning public institutions to deliver better outcomes.
I actually think this could become a very interesting part of the wider AoLP ecosystem.
The government’s challenge isn’t simply unemployment. It’s that nearly one million young people are outside education, employment or training, and many don’t know what opportunities they already possess. Most employment programmes begin by asking:
“What job can we get you?”
Get Secure™ starts somewhere quite different:
“Who are you? What strengths do you already have? How can AI help you build a sustainable livelihood?”
That’s a fundamentally different intervention.
Some aspects that stand out from our app are:
- It is designed specifically for people experiencing income insecurity, not just budgeting problems.
- It starts with human capital, recognising that skills, experience, resilience and interests are often someone’s greatest underused assets.
- It includes an AI Multiplier Audit, helping people identify where AI can increase earning capacity rather than simply replace jobs.
- It calculates a personalised Threshold Number—the monthly income required to reach financial security—and builds a plan around achieving it.
- It produces a structured Threshold Plan rather than simply providing information.
- It is available in any language, for any country, with a single £4.99 purchase and no subscriptions or upsells.
In the context of Burnham’s proposals, this could sit upstream of traditional employment support.
Imagine a mayor’s office receiving a young person who has been unemployed for 18 months.
Today’s pathway is often:
Benefits → employability course → CV → interviews.
Get Secure suggests another pathway:
Identity → human capital → entrepreneurial opportunities → AI leverage → income plan → sustainable livelihood.
That aligns closely with current policy discussions about prevention and local economic participation, but adds something that existing employment programmes rarely include: helping people discover and develop the assets they already possess.
One thought I’d make to strengthen the positioning even further is to emphasise that Get Secure™ isn’t just about finding work—it’s about creating economic agency.
A concise positioning statement is:
Get Secure™ helps people living with financial insecurity discover their strengths, identify AI-enabled income opportunities, and build a personalised plan towards sustainable livelihood and income security.
Or even more directly:
Helping people move from financial insecurity to sustainable livelihood through human capital, AI and entrepreneurship.
If local authorities genuinely receive responsibility for helping this “lost generation”, there may be a real opportunity to position Get Secure™ as a complementary tool—not as an employment service, but as an agency-restoration platform that helps people identify opportunities before they ever meet a work coach.
For reference, the app is available on the Apple App Store here:
Academy of Life Planning 