Youth unemployment rises again as UK heating bills climb

Britain’s youth labour market has weakened again, with the latest official estimate showing 923,000 people aged 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training, including 354,000 who were unemployed. The Office for National Statistics said its February 2026 bulletin was the newest available snapshot, with the next update due on 28 May 2026, and it stressed that labour-market figures remain provisional because of Labour Force Survey quality problems.

The wider jobs picture has also softened. The UK unemployment rate for people aged 16 and over was estimated at 4.9% in December 2025 to February 2026, higher than a year earlier. The Resolution Foundation said the NEET rate has risen sharply since 2019, undoing about one-third of the progress made after the financial crisis. It said just over half of that rise reflects a weaker labour market, while the rest is driven mainly by more young people being economically inactive because of ill health and disability.

The think tank also said young people are typically hit hardest in downturns, and that rising unemployment has come alongside sluggish growth and higher labour costs in 2025. Employer National Insurance changes and the April 2025 minimum-wage increase, it said, raised labour costs relative to older workers and made entry-level hiring harder.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has warned that Britain risks locking young adults into poorer job prospects and lower lifetime earnings unless training and first-job opportunities improve. In July 2025, it said fewer than half of young people surveyed, 47%, felt ready for work after education and called for the youth guarantee to be expanded to include work experience, apprenticeships and wage subsidies.

At the same time, household energy costs are keeping pressure on the same generation. GOV.UK says Winter Fuel Payment will be available to people born before 28 June 1960 and can be worth between £100 and £300 for winter 2026 to 2027. Citizens Advice said on 18 May 2026 that 4.6 million people worry about affording their energy bills, warning that higher costs are still hitting households that have not recovered from the last energy crisis.

Citizens Advice says the Warm Homes Plan could ease some of that burden if it is delivered effectively, through insulation, heat pumps, solar panels and batteries. Taken together, the jobs slowdown and the energy squeeze point to the same problem: younger adults are being asked to build independent lives at the very moment wages, work and household costs are pulling in the opposite direction.