Richard Partington

This is The Guardian.

Employers aren't taking people on as much as they used to.

And young people who lack experience, because they're by their definition at the start of their careers, are often the first to bear the brunt of that.

The life chances of people are really being eroded at the moment.

So this is more.

It's really big and it's incredibly worrying what it says about the position that the country is in and the prospects for the next generation.

So the report this morning from Alan Milburn, who was health secretary in Tony Blair's new Labour cabinet, spells out a pretty stark issue.

We have over a million young people dying.

age 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training.

This horrible word NEET is the acronym.

But I mean, it's something that I don't think people like to use as a term, but it encapsulates something really quite big and profound.

And that's that the life chances of people are really being eroded at the moment.

There's a multitude of reasons why the more and more young people are out of work.

It's substantially worse here and it's been getting worse as well, which is one of the most troubling parts.

Absolutely.

Amongst the rich European economies, we're in one of the worst positions and...

Since 2015, things have been going backwards.

We've fallen down the rankings relative to other countries.

I think this is why it's one of the most troubling statistics, troubling issues in the country at the moment.

As you say, six in ten never had a job.