Cribb describes this trend as “worrying” and suggests some of it started in the classroom during lockdown.
“Children were not prioritised during the pandemic,” he says. “I think it’s an open and reasonable question whether this is a hangover from poor-quality education during the pandemic and the huge disruptions that happened.”
Laurance Hancock, founder of The Boathouse Youth, a charity, says he’s witnessed the damage of lockdown first-hand.
Based in Blackpool, Hancock’s organisation helps more than 1,200 children and young people in poverty every year to get on with their lives.
While many middle-class families enjoyed lockdown, this was not the case for many those who struggled to make ends meet.
“The young people that we’re supporting, some of them didn’t even have a balcony to go outside in,” says Hancock. “And it was all that time when children weren’t allowed to go to the supermarket and playgrounds were having chains put around the gates on them.
“I talk about the toxic trio of drugs, alcohol and mental health issues that often lead to domestic violence. And we saw a huge spike, because people just couldn’t cope. And that led to really high emotions and nowhere to go. And that really just f—– people up.”
Experiences at school provide a clear foundation to attitudes to the world of work, he argues. Much of that was lost for a generation.
“School is your first experience of the establishment. It’s where you realise that you’re a small part of something bigger, and there are rules you need to adhere to.
“So if you don’t have a good experience at school, that impacts on your ability to be able to get through life, that there will always be rules to follow. And if you push against that too hard, you will end up just being on your own.”
Tens of thousands of students are graduating without joining the workforce, while the number of people claiming incapacity benefits for mental health conditions has also surged. Recent research also shows that an increasing number of children are claiming disability benefits for mental health issues, with 15-year-olds now more likely to be receiving a disability benefit than adults under the age of 52.
“If I were a policymaker, I would probably be concerned about two things,” says Cribb. “The higher rates of young people not in employment, education, in training, and the correlation with poor mental health.
“And I would be concerned about the rates of people on disability benefits. Because they either reflect much poorer health, or people’s perceived need to get on to disability benefits to help with their cost of living and in a sense getting stuck on these things at a significant cost to the state.”
Murphy says more needs to be done to keep young people engaged with work, especially young men.
“I think it’s definitely worrying if people do have spells out of work early in their adulthood,” she says.
“All the evidence suggests that that is bad for their future employment chances and wages. And yet, the longer you spend out of work, generally the harder it is to re-engage.”