Researchers from University College London (UCL) and the University of Essex found young people facing both disadvantages were more likely to be NEET and they discovered poor mental health was now having an even greater impact on younger generations.
The findings from the Equalise: ESRC Centre for Lifecourse Health Equity based at UCL come as the Government awaits the final report from the independent review by former minister Alan Milburn which will set out recommendations for tackling the problem of youth unemployment with more than 1 million young people aged from 16 to 24 now classed as NEET
Dr Emily Murray, Director of the University of Essex's Centre for Coastal Communities and co-lead for Equalise’s place-based inequalities theme, says tackling the problem will require greater investment in young people's mental health, targeted support for disadvantaged communities and intervention while children are still at school.
She said: “Given how much attention young people's mental health now gets, it is striking that the link between poor mental health at 14 and being out of education, employment or training at 23 has actually grown stronger. Our findings showed, for those born a decade earlier, the link was barely there. Something has changed for this generation and we urgently need to understand what."
Lead author Dr Katie S Taylor, from UCL, added: “Mental health is becoming an increasingly important driver of young people's chances in life. It is particularly concerning to see a worsening link between poor mental health in adolescence and being out of education, employment or training in early adulthood among more recently born generations; with the highest risk concentrated among young people growing up in the most deprived communities."
The researchers tracked two large groups of young people over a number of years: the Millennium Cohort Study, which follows almost 8,000 people born in 2000-01, and the UK Household Longitudinal Study: Understanding Society based at the University of Essex, which includes people from a wider range of birth years. Because both studies found the same patterns, the researchers say they can be more confident in the results.
Key findings
- Among teenagers with the poorest mental health at age 14, nearly one in five (18.7%) went on to be in the NEET category at age 23. In comparison, only around one in eight (13.4%) of those with the best mental health went on to be in the NEET category.
- More than 1 in 5 (21.7%) teenagers with consistently poor mental health at ages 14 and 17 were in the NEET category at age 23, compared with less than 1 in 7 (13.6%) of those with the best mental health at both ages.
- At age 14, almost 1 in 5 (18%) teenagers in the most deprived areas were categorised as NEET at age 23, much higher than the 1 in 9 (11%) who grew up in the least deprived areas.
- While mental health had little effect on whether a young person born in 1992 was in the NEET category, for young people born in 2002, having the poorest mental health predicts a much higher incidence of later NEET categorisation (14% compared to 6.7% amongst those with the best mental health).
- Poor mental health raised the risk of becoming NEET by a similar amount for young men and women, and in richer and poorer areas alike
According to the Office for National Statistics more than one million young people aged 16 to 24 were NEET in the UK between January and March 2026 – 13.5% of the age group, and 89,000 more than the year before. The interim report by Mr Milburn, published in May, showed numbers have been rising since 2019 and are higher than the rest of Europe.
Mr Milburn also found that support for young people across education, health, employment and welfare often arrives too late and identified poor mental health as an increasingly important factor. Since then, the Government has been rolling out new community mental health centres, Young Futures Hubs, the Youth Guarantee, Youth Hubs and Trailblazer schemes to help tackle the issue.
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