AI isn’t helping NEETs find jobs: Apprenticeships might

Young people are finding it ever harder to get a job – and although AI isn’t wholly to blame, it sure isn’t helping.

This is a worldwide trend, but let’s take the UK as our prime example. According to the official stats, more than a million people aged 16-24 were not in education, employment or raining (NEET) between January and March 2026. That’s 13.5% of young people.

This isn’t a new trend: that figure hovered around the 11% mark back in 2020, before dipping briefly in 2021 below 10%, and climbing sharply ever since.

Experts say the climb is due to economic instability, changing job markets, changes to national insurance and minimum wages. But research recently updated by Stanford suggests AI has hit younger people’s job prospects hardest.

“We find no evidence of widespread, economy-wide job displacement,” the researchers noted. “However, employment of young workers (ages 22–25) in AI-exposed occupations now stands 19% below where it would be had it kept pace with that of their less-exposed peers; experienced workers show no comparable gap.”

They added that the gap has widened since last year.

Falling grad vacancies

A survey from Lancaster University’s Work Foundation shows that one-in-three UK employers have reduced entry-level job openings in the last year, with a quarter of small businesses cutting such roles versus nearly half of medium and larger businesses.

A quarter of small firms in that study pinned the blame on AI and automation, while six in ten larger firms said the same.

Beyond that, recent stats say graduate job vacancies in the UK have halved over the past year. Analysis from jobs website Adzuna said it had 8,383 graduate vacancies listed in July, versus 15,397 in the same month last year.

Andrew Hunter, Adzuna Co-Founder, told journalists that July’s overall job figures were a “step backwards”. “The graduate job market also keeps setting new lows,” he added, “which tells us employers still haven’t found a reason to open up hiring at that level.”

Another grad job report suggests recruitment was down 5% last year after falling 15% in 2024, and down overall by 25% since 2022.

That all echoes previous figures around graduate job cuts at major consultancies, with PWC slashing its 100,000 hiring target a few months ago. “When we made the plans to hire that many people, the world looked very, very different,” Global Chairman Mohamed Kande told the BBC. “Now we have artificial intelligence.”

But any company replacing grads with AI is foolish. Graduate schemes are for training, not actual work; if actual work gets done by grads, that’s a bonus, not the purpose. These industries are causing problems for themselves down the line by failing to train the next generation of their own workers.

Indeed, another survey found that 48% of young people were considering a career in the trades, which frankly makes sense given the AI job apocalypse doomerism surrounding so-called professional roles. Meanwhile, openings in skilled trades have leapt by a third.

What can be done?

In the UK, Prime Minister Andy Burnham is hoping to boost youth employment by backing technical education and apprenticeships – I’ll get to the latter in a moment – but should do more by calling for any companies making a profit to hire a younger person.

But the vast majority of companies in the UK are actually small businesses. There are 2.7 million businesses in the UK, but only 2,000 that are “large businesses” delivering £1.5m in profits. If each of those added a couple younger members of staff, it would help those individuals winning roles but not materially change the figures.

If large companies stepped up and did more, as Sainsbury’s has by offering 10,000 work experience slots, it could have real impact.

Announcing the retailer’s move, Burnham said: “I encourage more businesses across the country to do the same.” But even that is largely just one-week work experience gigs for teenagers, rather than long-term, paid roles.

Apprenticeships for all

For smaller companies, there is a programme that could help support and fund younger workers. In the UK, any company that pays more than £3 million in salaries annually has to pay into the apprenticeship scheme; that’s about 27,000 businesses. That levy also gives them access to apprenticeships. (Similar programmes are getting attention in the US, China and elsewhere, too.)

While that’s still a small number, only 4% of levy-paying employers actually make use of those apprentices, leaving the funds to pay for smaller businesses to take part. They can get 100% of training costs covered.

In 2024/25, more than 350,000 people started on the scheme, which sees an apprentice paid a salary while training and earning work experience. Frustratingly, half of apprentices are now over the age of 25, with companies upskilling their existing workforce – including to get masters’ level credentials, though that was banned in January – rather than helping young people through the door.

What some companies may not realise is apprenticeships aren’t just for so-called blue-collar jobs, but include business administration as well as digital, IT and tech skills. This means technology companies could tap the apprenticeship scheme to help get young people jobs. Indeed, there’s even an AI apprenticeship.

Perhaps we should start taxing AI-using companies to better fund such projects, but in the meantime any company with the means should consider finding ways – apprenticeships, grad schemes, internships or otherwise – to hire young people now.

Otherwise we’re going to find ourselves short of experienced staff to promote upwards pretty soon.

More by Nicole Kobie

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