Immigration: a lost generation

By Richard North - May 29, 2026

“Job and career opportunities for young people are ‘not growing, they’re shrinking’, with one in six set to be out of work, education or training in five years unless action is taken”.

So says the Milburn Report, as summarised by the BBC, its rendition going on to say that the education, health and welfare systems are no longer fit for purpose in preparing young people for adult life, leaving the former minister to warn that “We are at risk of a lost generation”, with young adults facing a “perfect storm” of challenges.

However, this is only the interim report on worklessness and young people, part one of two parts, this being a “discovery phase” which focuses on providing a diagnosis on the increase in the number of young disabled people and those with a health condition who are NEET (not in employment, education or training). A “solution phase” will follow, with a report that will explore and identify potential areas for reform.

Alongside the report, we see the publication of ONS figures on youth unemployment, prompting the Telegraph to headline its report with: “Worst youth worklessness crisis since records began”, telling us that the “ONS figures show 600,000 are economically inactive as Milburn report urges action”.

But that, it appears, is only part of the whole. The total NEETs ran to 1.01 million in the period January to March of this year, the highest level for more than 12 years. These cost the UK £125 billion annually, fuelled by lost tax revenues and rising benefit payments- a sum far greater than the £65 billion that the UK spends on defence.

As to the youth unemployment figures, the Mail is in no doubt as to the cause, as it parades the headline: “Twenty-seven young migrants are hired for every British youngster as youth worklessness ‘fuelled’ by soaring non-EU immigration, analysis reveals”.

This analysis comes from the Centre for Social Justice which says that the young British workforce has grown by less than one percent since 2020 while the number of non-EU youth on the UK payroll has increased by 355 percent in the same period.

Crucially, the think-tank’s research shows that migrants are mostly taking entry-level positions, contrary to Milburn’s assertion that the first rung of the career ladder is “simply out of reach” for young Brits. Non-EU workers of all ages, it seems, nearly doubled in retail and hospitality roles between January 2020 and December 2025, while UK nationals in such posts fell by more than a quarter of a million.

Milburn does try to down-play the role of immigration, arguing that its relationship with the youth labour market “needs to be treated carefully”, declaring that his review “does not find evidence that migration is a primary driver of rising NEET levels”.

The main forces identified, he says, are weaker entry routes, a harder transition into work, and a labour market that has become less effective at bringing young people in.

Nevertheless, he concedes that that does not mean migration is irrelevant. Young people and migrant workers may compete for some of the same jobs, particularly in lower-paid sectors, he says.

Net migration has been historically high over recent years, concentrated in the sectors that serve as primary entry points for young workers: hospitality, social care, food processing, warehousing, agriculture. He cites hospitality as an example, where 31 percent of workers are immigrants and 36 percent young.

Migrant workers, Milburn continues, typically have arrived with prior experience and a willingness to work irregular hours. If an employer has a choice between a 28-year-old with five years of experience and an 18-year-old with no work history, the hiring decision can be economically rational.

This has to be more the case with the recent increase in the minimum wage, where that 18-year-old will cost as much to employ as an experienced older worker.

This doesn’t stop Milburn trying to fudge the issue, with him asserting that the relationship is “not straightforward”. The effect, he says, depends on how employers recruit, how labour demand adjusts, and whether changes in migration alter the number, quality and conditions of jobs on offer. The current evidence, he maintains, does not support a simple displacement story.

He then destroys his own case, and the limited credibility of his report by declaring that “the evidence base is also limited”. It is difficult, he says, to isolate the effect of migration on young people’s employment outcomes, not least because many young people respond to weaker labour-market conditions by staying in education for longer.

There are, he adds. also “important gaps in our understanding of how migration affects hours, flexibility, training opportunities and job quality in the sectors where young people are most likely to work”.

This is the man, one recalls, who tells us that his review “does not find evidence that migration is a primary driver of rising NEET levels”. That he has not found evidence – or does not want to see the evidence – does not mean, of course, that there is no evidence. The Centre for Social Justice seems to have found some.

Ironically, though, the greatest disadvantage is experienced by some ethnic groups, with Black, African and Caribbean young people in 2024 having the highest NEET rates of all ethnic groups at 15.2 percent.

White young people sat just above the average at 13.2 percent, with Chinese young people the lowest at 8.7 percent. Pakistani and Bangladeshi young people have a NEET rate of 12.6 percent, which sits just below the overall average.

For my own part, personal experience would seem to contradict Milburn. Much against my better judgement, we get the local paper – a scrappy little publication – delivered to the house each day. When we started taking the paper, it came via the local newsagent, popped in our letterbox by a school-age child.

The delivery contract has since been taken over by the publisher and we now get the paper delivered, usually at 2-3 am, by a South Asian man, driving a car. He is pleasant enough, and reliable, but he is not a schoolkid. Effectively, he is taking pocket-money from schoolchildren and depriving them of valuable work experience.

As a boy, I had a whole range of what we used to call Saturday or holiday jobs. One holiday job was washing the dishes in a Lyons Corner House – a brand long since disappeared – (demoted from counter service as my customer-interface skills were somewhat lacking).

For a time, I had two Saturday jobs – one delivering cans of paraffin to the flats in which we lived, for the then ubiquitous paraffin heaters, from the weekly tanker which came up our street – a wonderful ex-WD Bedford M-series.

After that, each Saturday, I helped out cleaning cars, a lucrative job that would be akin to modern-day valeting. Sunday, I had a newspaper delivery round. Those jobs now simply don’t exist for children – or are done by immigrants – again depriving young people of work experience.

Elsewhere, we see in the Telegraph an article headed “How the ‘Boriswave’ of 4.2m migrants will shape Britain for generations”, with a sub-head reading: “Following a post-Brexit surge in immigration, new figures reveal the long-term fiscal and social cost of low-skilled arrivals”.

The article doesn’t go into detail on the effect on youth employment, but the figure itself tells its own story. Add 4.2 million, mainly low=skilled immigrants to the population – people who are often willing to accept poor employment conditions and below-average wages – and it is hard to accept that this would not have an effect on youth employment.

There are, of course, other factors – many other factors – and The Sun is merciless in allocating blame, so Milburn’s point about the issues not being “straightforward” is not entirely without merit.

But immigration is a self-inflicted wound, where we are importing low-IQ dross from the third world to the detriment of our own children. We owe our “lost generation” something more than that.