Summary of a report that looks at the problem of youth unemployment, and what needs to be done in order to counteract it and prevent a generation of young people being shut out of the labour market and increasingly disconnected from work and learning. The report makes short-term recommendations to rectify the problem of youth unemployment, focusing on education and skills development. The short-term recommendations include: strengthening incentives for employers who offer apprenticeships to the unemployed; reducing complexity for employers – for example by rolling out the payment by results pilots to more employers; and expanding the Apprenticeship Training Agency model, where apprentice providers can employ directly and place apprentices with host employers.

In the long-term, the report considers that youth unemployment, having not been below 500,000 since the early 1970s, represents a structural problem. Addressing this structural problem requires fundamental reform. In the longer-term, the report recommends that this reform should be built around two key elements: a unified system across all 16–24 education, learning and employment support, which could be fully localised or commissioned to non-government providers and supported by a new Universal Youth Credit.