Changes not seen for two centuries to the health of the country’s youth populations is impeding economic growth and contracting supply to the labour market.
Additionally, current health approaches do not serve to maximise what people can do and get them into work.
This is according to an interim report into youth labour market inactivity by former health secretary Alan Milburn which revealed nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the United Kingdom were not in education, employment or training (NEET).
The report also found that over the past decade, the proportion who said they were not in education or employment or training due to a work-limiting health condition had increased by 70%.
The proportion of disabled NEETs citing mental health as their primary condition had almost doubled to more than four in 10 and among disabled NEET young people anxiety, depression, neurodevelopmental conditions and other forms of distress were no longer peripheral factors.
Health-related inactivity sticks
Furthermore, the report also pointed out that once health-related inactivity takes hold, it stuck.
Of those who fell into health-related economic inactivity between 2017 and 2019, almost eight in 10 were still NEET more than two years later.
Successive cohorts of young people were found to be doing worse than their predecessors as a young person first claiming health and disability benefits in 2019 was a third more likely to be NEET five years later than those who first claimed in 2010.
And today around seven in 10 young people claiming a health and disability benefit were found to be still claiming a decade later.
Impeding economic growth and labour market
Milburn maintained that for the first time in perhaps two centuries, changes in health, especially mental health, were impeding economic growth and causing a contraction in the supply of labour.
“All too often the way the NHS works inhibits rather than enables participation,” he said.
“The NHS treats symptoms. But for too many young people, diagnosis, treatment and discharge do not lead back to education, training or work.
“They are being categorised as unfit to work not least through the fit note process, when with help, support and earlier intervention, they would be able to do so.
“All too often a diagnosis becomes a gateway into the health and welfare system and to a life outside the labour market.
“Instead of assuming that people with a diagnosis cannot participate, the first question the system should be asking is what can they do and how can it enable that to happen,” he added.