There’s a particular kind of British euphemism that bothers me. We call nearly one million young people ‘NEET’–not in education, employment or training–as if they were a category in a spreadsheet rather than a generation in limbo. 

In the latest UK data, the number has dipped below one million, to around 946,000. A small victory, we’re told. But the real story isn’t the size of the group. It’s the way we insist on seeing them as a problem, not as a resource. 

Spend five minutes with any group of young people branded NEET and two things strike you. First, the system has often written them off far faster than they’ve written themselves off. Second, they are already living the future of work that policymakers like to debate at conferences: fluid, digital, networked, side-hustle heavy, deeply sceptical of institutions that don’t deliver. In other words, they are practising reinvention in real time–just without a safety net and without anyone calling it a skill. 

We cling to the idea that ‘future-ready talent’ is produced in tidy, linear ways: GCSEs, university, graduate scheme, promotion, perhaps a master’s when the mood strikes. When that conveyor belt breaks–through cost, crisis, disability, care responsibilities or simple boredom–we label the outliers as a lost generation. But what if we’ve got the direction of risk entirely backwards? In a world of brittle business models and shrinking corporate lifespans, the most precarious path might be the conventional one. 

Institutions are the real problem

This is where cities, employers and governments need a reinvention of their own. The standard policy response to NEET numbers is remedial: emergency schemes, short-term training funds, one more initiative with a logo and a ministerial photo-op. It treats young people as defective products to be re-worked until they fit a 20th-century mould. A future-ready approach would start from a different premise: that many of these young people already hold the missing capabilities we claim to want–adaptability, digital fluency, informal leadership, cross-cultural agility–and that the real deficit sits with institutions that don’t know how to recognise or reward them. 

Consider how we recruit. Most entry-level roles are still filtered by formal qualifications, uninterrupted CVs and ‘relevant experience’ defined narrowly. The message to anyone who has cared for a sick parent, built a micro-business on a marketplace app, or moderated an online community is simple: none of that counts. We then publish reports lamenting skills shortages and the difficulty of reaching younger workers. Reinvention is often a matter of looking at the same reality with a different lens; here, the lens is badly out of date. 

A more imaginative model would treat NEET status as a starting line, not a verdict. Cities could build ‘reinvention studios’–light-touch hubs where young people can bring whatever they’re already doing (gaming, gig work, caregiving, creative projects) and translate it into recognised skills, micro-credentials and real-world placements. Employers could commit a percentage of early-career roles to non-linear talent, designing on-ramps that value portfolios, not just diplomas. Governments could stop funding programmes that obsess over attendance and start backing those that measure progression, agency and long-term earning power. 

Updating standards

None of this is about lowering standards. It’s about updating them. The future-ready organisation will need people who can navigate ambiguity, learn in public and switch between roles as conditions change. Many young people outside formal systems are already doing exactly that, because life has given them no choice. The real indulgence is to assume that those who have stayed neatly within the lines are automatically better prepared for what comes next. 

There is, of course, a harder truth beneath the policy jargon: being NEET is rarely a lifestyle decision. It is often the consequence of poverty, discrimination, health and geography. Reinvention, if it is to mean anything at all, has to operate at this level too–making transport, housing, mental-health support and childcare part of the skills conversation, not a sympathetic footnote. A future-ready labour market built on unstable lives will not stay future-ready for long. 

So perhaps it’s time to retire the acronym. When we talk about NEETs, we lock people into a deficit. When we talk about a reinvention generation, we at least leave room for movement–and for responsibility on the part of those who design systems, not just those who fall through them. In an age that demands constant reinvention, the real test of a future-ready nation is simple–what it does with the talent it has already decided it doesn’t need. 

Photo: Dreamstime.