Professor John Robertson OBA

In the Guardian yesterday:

Britain slipping down global league table for youth employment, says report – Britain is slipping down the global league table for youth employment amid a dramatic rise in worklessness that is putting a generation’s future at risk, research has warned.

Sounding the alarm over a worsening youth jobs crisis, the report from the accountancy firm PwC said Britain’s economy was missing out on £26bn a year because of sharp regional divisions in youth joblessness.

In its annual youth employment index, it said the UK was falling behind other advanced economies amid a deterioration in the youth jobs rate to a 10-year low while other comparable nations were making progress.

and at the bottom:

PwC said that reversing the trend could boost the economy. If the UK regions with the highest Neet rates were able to narrow the gap with Northern Ireland, which at 9% has the lowest rate, it estimated this could add £13bn to UK GDP. Closing the gap entirely would add up to £26bn.

It said London and Scotland had the most to gain, reflecting the large number of young people classified as Neet in these areas, where as many as 15% and 16% of all 16- to 24-year-olds are neither working or learning.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/11/britain-slipping-down-global-league-table-for-youth-employment-says-report

I’m not sure how credible research by an accountancy firm will be but the last point seems, to some extent, to contradict government statistics suggesting:

UK youth unemployment 40% higher than in Scotland which has one of the lowest rates in Western Europe

For some reason, the above 2022 survey does not include the recent data from the UK.

For Scotland in 2023/2024:

The estimated unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds was 10.4 per cent in October 2023 to September 2024. This was 0.7 percentage points (pp) higher than a year ago (9.7 per cent) ¹

For the UK, in 2023:

The unemployment rate for young people was 14.2%, up from 13.8% from the year before.²

These data would put Scotland in the second lowest category (8-12%) with Finland and the Baltic States, while the UK (England) would be in a higher category with (12-16%) with France and Portugal.

Sources:

1. https://www.gov.scot/publications/labour-market-statistics-for-16-to-24-year-olds-scotland-and-the-united-kingdom-october-2023-to-september-2024/pages/unemployment/#:~:text=The%20estimated%20unemployment%20rate%20for%2016%20to%2024,October%202018%20to%20September%202019%20%289.1%20per%20cent%29.
2. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn05871/