‘I just got AI emails rejecting my application – or no reply at all’: this is the soul-crushing reality of being a NEET. John Harris.

Alan Milburn describes them as a ‘lost generation’. Those I spoke to just want to know what they have to do to finally get a job – and a chance in life.

Some good news. Not long ago, Callum was pointed in the direction of a new Manchester-based charity called Breakout. The people there arranged mentoring sessions and work experience placements. He is now an undergraduate at the University of Salford, studying computer science and artificial intelligence – but what his life experience so far seems to have left him with is only the vaguest sense of his own future. When I asked him for his thoughts on the subject, there was an uneasy silence. “My plan is just to get through university,” he eventually said.