From Helen Wylde-Archibald, Chief Executive, & Ronnie Carter, Chief Innovation Officer, Devon Chamber of Commerce

Every so often a report lands on our desks that we cannot put down. Most government reviews are read by the people paid to read them and nobody else.

The Milburn review of young people and work is different, and we want every business in Devon to know what is in it, because it describes our future workforce, and right now we are looking towards a very dark future for business if we cannot revert some of the trends that are currently emerging. 

So here it is. No jargon, no waffle. The report, what it means for Devon, and some little things we can start to do about it, together.

The report in plain English

The government asked Alan Milburn, a former Cabinet minister with a reputation for straight talking, to find out why so many young people have fallen out of education and work. His interim findings were published in May.¹ The full picture took our breath away.

Nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are not in education, employment or training. One in eight.¹ If they all lived in one place, it would be Britain’s third largest city.

But the number that has stayed with us is this: six in ten of them have never had a job.¹ Not a Saturday shift, not a paper round, not a summer washing dishes. Never. Twenty years ago it was four in ten. Think about what your first job gave you: the alarm clock discipline, the awkward phone calls, the first payslip, the boss who took a chance on you. An entire generation is growing up without any of it, because the first rung of the ladder, the one we all climbed without even noticing, has quietly been removed.

And here is the part that surprised us most. This is no longer really an unemployment story. The majority of these young people are not looking for work at all, and the fastest growing reason is health, above all mental health. Once a young person drifts into that position, it sticks: the review found that of those who fall out for health reasons, around eight in ten are still out more than two years later.¹ The longer it lasts, the harder and more expensive it becomes to reverse.

Milburn also takes a hammer to the myths, and we are glad he does. Eighty-four per cent of these young people say they want a job, education or training.¹ He met young people who had applied for fifty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty roles and heard nothing back. Applications swallowed by portals. Entry level jobs demanding experience that nobody will give them. Interviews conducted by software before a human being has ever looked them in the eye. His verdict is blunt: young people have not failed the system. The system has failed them. Education, health, welfare and the jobs market all operate in their own lanes, and nobody owns the journey from the classroom to the workplace.

The review estimates the bill for all this at £125 billion a year, more than we spend on education, and puts the potential cost to each young person caught in it at up to £300,000 in lifetime earnings.¹ On current trends, it forecasts more than 1.25 million young people in this position within five years.¹ Milburn’s final report, with his proposed solutions, arrives in September. Devon should not wait for it, and we will not.

Why Devon cannot look away

Read this report with a map of Devon beside you and it becomes uncomfortable very quickly. Milburn finds that young people are most likely to fall through the cracks in coastal communities, where work is seasonal, transport is thin and town centres have hollowed out.¹ He could have been describing our county.

The figures in the Get Devon, Plymouth and Torbay Working Plan tell the local story.² More than 145,000 working age residents across Devon, Plymouth and Torbay are economically inactive. Around 4% of our 16 to 18 year olds are outside education, employment and training against an England average of about 5.4%, but that comfortable headline conceals deeper inequalities: Plymouth sits higher at around 5.2%, and the rate rises to 13.4% for young people with an education, health and care plan, and to around 48% for care leavers.⁵ In Torbay, 42% of working age people outside the workforce altogether cite long term sickness, exactly the health driven drift Milburn describes nationally. And yet, at the very same time, the same plan records more than 4,000 hard to fill vacancies in Exeter in a single month, and £4.4 billion of defence investment at Devonport that needs thousands of new workers from this area over the coming decade, including at least 5,500 new employees sought by Babcock.²

Sit those facts side by side. Young people without work in one part of the county. Employers desperate for people in another. Both halves of the answer live in Devon, and the systems that should connect them are stretched to bursting trying to meet these needs with limited resources, (our local government, our educators, our charities and our training organisations cannot deal with these challenges alone they need all of us as well). That is not a social problem. It is an environmental change which will impact all of us in our recruitment pipelines, our succession plans and our growth strategy, and it is happening right now.

The good news: Devon already has a head start

Here is where we can offer you something genuinely hopeful: The groundwork has already been done.

Amongst the many great actions already underway, there is also The Greater Devon Local Skills Improvement Plan, which the Chamber leads as the employer voice for Devon, Plymouth and Torbay, is the framework and evidence base for tackling exactly the failures this report describes. Forget the acronym for a moment. The LSIP is simply this: businesses informing and supporting the education and training system about what skills we need, and the system listening so that we can work better together to make the best of the opportunities and deal with the threats. It is not a complete fix on its own, no single plan could be, but it gives Devon something many regions lack: a shared, employer led starting point, built on evidence gathered from hundreds of local businesses and from young people themselves, working with our expert and professional educators and training companies to achieve better outcomes for all us.³

That evidence settled on four priorities, and it is striking how closely Milburn’s national findings echo what Devon’s educators, charities, employers and young people had already told us:

• Digital fluency and future readiness. Milburn warns that automated recruitment is screening young people out before a human sees them, and that the entry level jobs most exposed to AI are exactly the ones young people rely on.¹ Devon’s workforce, at every age, needs practical digital confidence, not just awareness.
• Core competencies and impact skills. When Milburn surveyed employers, almost none said the problem was reading and writing. They said it was work readiness: communication, reliability, confidence, knowing how a workplace works.¹ Devon employers told us the same thing, almost word for word.
• Leadership, inclusive culture and innovation. Employers told Milburn they want to hire young people but feel unequipped to support a generation arriving with more anxiety and less workplace experience.¹ That is a management capability question, and in a county built on small businesses it lands on the desks of owners and first line managers.
• Access to employment and career pathways. Our own research with young people across Devon found that over half simply did not know what opportunities existed, and four in ten said confidence, not qualifications, was holding them back.³ They want to build their lives here. They cannot see the way in. Milburn found exactly the same thing nationally. The problem is navigation, not aspiration.

The national evidence and our local evidence now point firmly in the same direction. That alignment matters: it means Devon can move with confidence, and it strengthens the case we make to government for the investment our skills system needs.

What we are doing, and what we are asking of you

This matters to us personally, and the Chamber will not be asking anyone to do something we are not doing ourselves. But we need to start somewhere trying to make a difference together working with our academic institutions, Local Government and the wider business environment, all of whom are already working on these issues.  We must support not only our young people but our anchor institutions in addressing these issues

Working with partners across the whole of Devon, including YMCA Plymouth and Devon, Plymouth & Torbay Careers Hub we are getting behind locally organised but beautifully simple and accurately targeted schemes:

So, lets start with few FANTASTIC INITIATIVES which we can get behind:

• The Careers Carousel.  This event organised by the Plymouth YMCA asks that Business people join with them and a group of young people and talking honestly about what they do and how they got there. Real jobs, real routes, real faces. We need 26 more volunteers from across the county. And in the spirit of practicing what we say, one of the Chamber senior team will be among them. YMCA Plymouth has seen real results with this approach, just ask some of our members who have already participated, for a small amount of time someone in your business could really help us start to make a difference to one of our local young people.
• Two hours in a business. A second initiative from YMCA Plymouth. We are asking our member businesses to open your doors to a small group of young people for two hours. No paperwork mountain, no long-term commitment. Just a genuine workplace, possibly the first one some of these young people will ever have stood inside. We need 24 more businesses, from any sector, anywhere in Devon. They will be accompanied by either the YMCA team or members of their educational body.  And again, we at the Chamber will be hosting young people in our own offices as part of this approach. For those of us who remember the horrors of work experience and the photocopier or years’ worth of filling I think this scheme will be far more beneficial for many young people in showing them what business is about.
• The Devon, Plymouth and Torbay Careers Hub is one of our 2026 Devon Business Awards nominees. Set up in 2018 alongside The Careers and Enterprise Company, it works with every state funded secondary school, special school, alternative provision and post-16 college across our patch, connecting them with local employers so young people get a genuine feel for the world of work before they leave education. The good news for businesses is that getting involved does not have to be a big commitment. It can be as light as giving an hour for a mock interview or a careers talk as a Careers Champion, or as strategic as helping shape skills policy across the region as a Cornerstone Employer, with Enterprise Adviser and Employer Partner roles sitting in between. Whatever you can spare, the Hub provides the training, resources and support to make it count.

Of course, if those two hours spark something more for you as a business, the new national Youth Jobs Grant, due to be delivered from June 2026, gives employers £3,000 for taking on a young person aged 18 to 24 who has been on Universal Credit and looking for work for six months.⁴ The government will help pay for the chance you take.

Milburn ends his report with a line we will borrow, because we cannot improve on it: 

“Young people have not given up on work, and we must not give up on them”.

In Devon, we have the evidence, the framework and the partners. What we need now is you, and we absolutely acknowledge all of the good work that is already happening in business, in schools, colleges, universities, with training professionals, charities and our local Government. We simply want to make it easier for all our busy members to also get involved and help us stop this trend which has such dreadful implications for our young people and our businesses. For anyone who is a parent we think you can probably appreciate why we are so keen that as a Chamber we should actively take up a voice to support our young people into work.

Few hours.

One conversation.

That is where every working life begins.

Let one begin in your business.

And if you feel the tone of this message is different to what we normally send you, please be assured it comes directly from our hearts, our professional pride, our mission, vision and values as a Chamber, and a desire to help our local community, our educational leaders, local government, our charities and of course our members in building a better future for Devon, together.

How to take part

What you are committing to: a single two-hour session. Carousel volunteers join one organised event and share their career story with small groups of young people. Host businesses welcome a small group, accompanied throughout by staff from our partner organisations, show them the workplace and introduce the kinds of roles you offer. We handle the organisation; you bring the two hours and the honesty.

YMCA – Career Carousel Sign Up

The Devon, Plymouth and Torbay Careers Hub offers a range of ways in, from giving an hour for a mock interview or careers talk as a Careers Champion, to supporting a school over a year as an Enterprise Adviser, right up to shaping skills policy across the region as a Cornerstone Employer. There is no minimum and no formal arrangement needed to start, and the Hub provides the training, resources and support throughout.

Devon, Plymouth & Torbay Careers Hub – Employer Volunteer form 2026

Tell us which scheme you are joining, your business name and location, and any sectors or roles you would like to showcase. We will confirm dates and arrangements within a week.

Helen Wylde-Archibald is Chief Executive of Devon Chamber of Commerce, the Employer Representative Body for the Greater Devon Local Skills Improvement Plan. Ronnie Carter is the Executive Lead for LSIP at the Devon Chamber

Sources and notes

1. Young People and Work: Interim Report (the Milburn review), Department for Work and Pensions, May 2026. Available at: gov.uk/government/publications/young-people-and-work-interim-report. Figures cited: 957,000 young people aged 16 to 24 NEET at the end of 2025 (around one in eight); just over six in ten NEET young people have never had a paid job, up from around four in ten twenty years ago; almost eight in ten of those entering health related inactivity between 2017 and 2019 were still NEET more than two years later; 84% of NEET young people surveyed want to find a job, education or training; estimated cumulative annual cost of £125 billion; estimated lifetime earnings loss of up to £300,000 per individual; forecast of more than 1.25 million young people NEET (a rate above 16%) within five years; employer survey findings on work readiness; findings on coastal communities and automated recruitment.

2. Get Devon, Plymouth and Torbay Working Plan 2025–2027, Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority and Plymouth City Council, September 2025. Available at: democracy.plymouth.gov.uk (Appendix B). Figures cited: more than 145,000 economically inactive working age residents; 42% of economically inactive residents in Torbay citing long term sickness; over 4,000 difficult to fill vacancies registered in Exeter in June 2025; £4.4 billion investment to 2035 at HMNB Devonport, with Babcock anticipating at least 5,500 new local employees.

3. Greater Devon Local Skills Improvement Plan 2026–2029, Devon Chamber of Commerce (Employer Representative Body). Young people’s findings are drawn from the Young Voices research by Micronomy and Volt, February 2026, which engaged 88 young people aged 13 to 30 across Devon. The sample is indicative rather than statistically representative; among those engaged, 54% identified lack of awareness of opportunities as the primary barrier to accessing skills training and 40% identified lack of confidence rather than lack of qualifications as their main career barrier.

4. House of Commons Library, Youth Guarantee briefing. Available at: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10827. The Youth Jobs Grant provides £3,000 to employers for every young person they take on aged 18 to 24 who has been on Universal Credit and looking for work for six months; the government expects the grant to support around 60,000 young people over three years, with delivery from June 2026.

5. Devon NEET data: Devon County Council NEET strategy and supporting analysis Figures cited: approximately 4% of 16 to 18 year olds NEET in Devon against an England average of approximately 5.4%; Plymouth approximately 5.2%; 13.4% for young people with an education, health and care plan; approximately 48% for care leavers. Note: these figures measure 16 to 18 year olds on the NEET definition and are not directly comparable with the 16 to 24 figures in the Milburn review or with claimant based measures.