Britain now has more jobless young people than Spain, and the fix could leave them poorer

Britain built its reputation on flexible hiring and world-class universities, yet it has now slipped past Spain in the number of young people with no job and no place in education. The fix now being discussed is to raise their wages even more slowly.

Britain moves ahead of Spain in the wrong league table

Around 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in Britain, 13 per cent of the total population in that age group, were neither working nor studying between April and June 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics. That was down slightly on the previous quarter, but still 30,000 higher than a year earlier.

Spain’s equivalent figure, covering a slightly wider 15 to 29 age bracket, has just fallen to its lowest level since 2002: 11.5 per cent, or around 901,000 young people, according to the OECD’s latest figures on education and work. The two measures can’t be compared identically, since Spain’s spans several more years of the twenties. But even allowing for that, few would have predicted a decade ago that Spain, long known for youth joblessness, would end up looking healthier than Britain on this count.

What being ‘NEET’ actually means

The term used by statisticians is NEET, not in education, employment or training, a broad category that catches the graduate still living at home and applying for jobs, the school leaver who never found an apprenticeship, and the young adult signed off sick and out of the system altogether. Spain also has a similar term: Nini, which stands for ‘Ni estudia ni trabaja’ or ‘doesn’t study or work’. It can sound like someone has switched off or given up, but the British government’s own review found the opposite: 84 per cent of young people counted as NEET say they want a job, a course or training. The numbers mostly describe a system failing to catch people, more than a generation that has stopped trying. 

Why the jobs and classrooms are disappearing

Researchers point to several things happening together. Entry-level jobs, shop floor work, call centres, a first job in hospitality, have been quietly disappearing, apprenticeship places have fallen sharply, and employers say artificial intelligence is part of why they are hiring fewer young beginners than a year ago.

Health is the other big driver. Mental health problems now account for a growing share of young people signed off as unable to work, and the government’s review found this kind of inactivity tends to stick once it starts. Underneath both trends also lies another issue, which is that welfare, health and job-support services aren’t well joined up, so a young person can easily fall between all of them. More than 300,000 in England are thought to be NEET without claiming any benefit at all, so they become completely invisible to the system meant to help them.

The wage argument, and why it isn’t really about a pay cut

Workers aged 18 to 20 in Britain currently earn less than those 21 and over doing the same job: £10.85 an hour (about €12.65), against £12.71 (about €14.82) for adults. Before the last election, Labour promised to scrap that gap entirely by 2029. However, that promise has quietly slipped. In March, the government gave the Low Pay Commission, which sets the rates, “full flexibility” over how fast the two figures should meet, and pensions minister Torsten Bell told reporters in May that the manifesto pledge “did not set out the timeline”, adding that anyone who assumed otherwise had made “an understandable mistake”.

Nobody serious in this debate is proposing to cut what young workers already take home, but what’s being discussed is slowing how quickly the youth rate rises, or keeping it separate and lower for longer, rather than closing the gap as fast as planned. Business groups including the British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses have both published surveys suggesting employers would hire fewer under-21s if the gap keeps closing at pace. The Low Pay Commission reports its final view in October, and the government is reportedly also studying the Netherlands, where pay rises in smaller, age-based steps and far fewer young people end up NEET.

Why unions doubt lower pay is the answer 

Unions aren’t convinced wages are the real obstacle. The general trade union GMB’s Andy Prendergast said employers “tell us that every single improvement in workers’ rights is going to cause a problem, and time and time again they have been proved wrong.” The Trades Union Congress has called the lower youth rate “unfair and obsolete”, and one workplace survey found close to a third of employers already struggle to justify paying two people differently for the same job. 

The government’s own review reads less like a case for cheaper labour and more like a warning that Britain has let the problem build on several fronts at once. Left unaddressed, its worst case has the figure passing 1.25 million within five years, one in six of that age group not working, studying or training.

None of this means Spain has solved its own youth unemployment problem either. The country has led Europe’s youth jobless tables for years, and 11.5 per cent is still above the EU average. What has changed is Britain’s side of the comparison, a country that built its economic story on flexible hiring is now explaining, for the first time in years, why more of its young people are falling through the cracks than Spain’s.