For our jobless young people, Labour really isn't working

The jobs numbers out this week are the starkest and most sobering I've seen in decades.

- ALAN MILBURN

One in six young people is unemployed - an 11-year high. And, terrifyingly, almost 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training (the so-called Neets) at all. They're not even looking for work. That's enough people who are detached from the labour market to fill Wembley Stadium 11 times over. If they formed a city, it would be the third-biggest in the country.

We can do all the numbers. But let's put it into words. This country is now facing the existential risk of a lost generation. Something dramatic and permanent is changing in the labour market. The NEET phenomenon is just the tip of the iceberg. Parents are more worried than ever about the world their kids are growing up in. About their prospects for a job, a home, a decent future.

This is not a marginal problem. It is an existential threat to their life chances and to our country's future prosperity. If you miss that first rung on the ladder in your late teens and early twenties, the risk is that you never climb it. It can easily cascade into a lifetime on benefits. It means you start your adult life never having experienced the dignity, discipline and direction that work can provide. Never having earned a payslip. Never having built the habits and skills of a first job. Never having gained the connections and confidence that work can bring.