Nearly half of Neets classified as disabled, new data shows

Almost half of young people not in employment, education or training were classified as disabled in the year to March, with the figure more than doubling in the last 11 years. The Government is currently working on reducing the number of 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training – known as Neets – with a review expected to be published in the coming weeks making recommendations for changes in the system. The number of Neets topped a million earlier this year for the first time in more than a decade, fuelling calls for more help to get young people into work.

Government data published on Wednesday showed 45.3% of Neets were classed as disabled in the year to March. The Department for Work and Pensions said this was a rise of 24.2 percentage points since the proportion of 21.1% in the 12 months to March 2014. The latest data showed disabled young people were more than three times as likely to be Neet compared to non-disabled young people – 30.2% compared with 8.6%. Read More: Budget 'must get young people back into work', Lord Price says as he urges National Insurance break for employers amid NEETs crisis Read More: More than a third of Neets living in nine largest cities, research finds Depression, bad nerves or anxiety was the most common main health condition reported by disabled Neets, accounting for almost a quarter (23.8%), followed by autism (22.7%).

Harriet Edwards, director of influencing at the national disability charity Sense, said a lack of tailored support to find work “means too many young disabled people’s ambitions and life chances are being cruelly stripped away – we need urgent action to tackle this”. Asli Atay, senior policy adviser at the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, said the figures “underline the scale of the challenge facing the Government”. She said the university’s own research had suggested “disabled young people are being disproportionately hit by the sharp decline in starter jobs, which analysis of online jobs boards suggests have fallen by 49% over the past decade”.

She added: “This has significant implications for their longer-term prospects. Over the past decade, around four in five disabled Neet young people remained outside education, employment or training a year later, compared to two in five non-disabled young people.” Sense urged the Government to “rule out cutting the health element of universal credit for young disabled people”, saying for some people with complex needs, “work will never be the right option”, while for others “losing financial security would make an already difficult job hunt harder”.

The charity instead called for ministers to invest in “specialist jobcentre support by training frontline staff” and said provision of assistive technology “is a vital first step”. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has previously said he is committed to bringing down the benefits bill, but not through “crude cuts”. Last month, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said her party would take a “tough-love” approach to the under-25s, including barring them from going straight from school on to benefits.

Unemployed people aged 16-24 who had not worked continuously for six months would be unable to claim universal credit under Tory plans, with school or education leavers who did not have a job offered support through a Get to Work scheme, and only able to claim money if they took part in it. An estimated 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were not in education, employment or training between April and June this year, according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures.

This was down from an estimated 1,012,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK who were Neet in January to March 2026. Updated data is due to be published by the ONS later this month. Meanwhile, the latest Government data also showed there were 10.6 million working-age disabled people – those aged 16-64 – in the three months to June this year, which DWP said is a “significant increase” of around a quarter of a million on the same point last year.

There were 5.6 million disabled people in employment in the UK in April to June and the disability employment rate – which is the number of disabled people in employment divided by the number of disabled people – was similar to the previous year at 53%, compared to 82.4% for non-disabled people. The disability employment gap – the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people – was 29.4 percentage points in April to June, down slightly from 29.7 percentage points at the same point last year.