The unemployment rate for 16 to 24-year-olds has risen to 16.2%, the highest since late 2014, with nearly a million young Britons now not in education, employment or training. Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies suggests the current decline in youth employment is approaching levels last seen during the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Amazon’s UK boss John Boumphrey has called on employers, government and society to stop blaming young people for the crisis, describing it as “a system problem that requires a system response.” He argued the education system is not producing work-ready young people, and called for mandatory work experience for all over-16s, describing it as “transformative” in developing the skills employers are looking for.

Boumphrey called for businesses, local governments and further education colleges to work together regionally to address skills gaps, noting that Amazon itself struggles to recruit enough workers with the technical skills it needs despite employing 75,000 people across the UK.

Former Labour minister Alan Milburn, whose independent review of UK youth unemployment is due this summer, has previously described the issue as “a social catastrophe, an economic catastrophe and a political catastrophe.”