“I’ve applied for factories, care work, hospital work – anything to just get a job to support me and my son,” says 20-year-old mum Libby.
She says she’s sent hundreds of job applications to employers in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, with no success.
“I’ve walked around the shops, gone into businesses giving out my CV,” she tells the BBC.
“Day to day it is depressing, because you don’t hear anything back, you’re constantly trying to find a job, trying to fight for a job, and you hear nothing.”
She is one of 923,000 16-24-year-olds estimated to have been not in education, employment or training – Neet – in the first three months of 2025, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
That equates to roughly one in eight people aged 16 to 24.
Although Friday’s Neets figures show a slight decrease on the same period last year, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall says “there are still nearly a million young people locked out of the system and being written off”.
The ONS publishes estimates on Neets every three months, with February’s figures – covering October to December – showing an 11-year high of 987,000.
Libby is now doing a first aid course at a local charity centre, having been referred there by a job centre, with the aim of pursuing her dream of running her own dog grooming business.
But Grimsby has lower rates of employment, external for all adults than the national average, making it harder for young people there to find work.
