I help British businesses hire abroad - it's no wonder NEET numbers are rising.
I run a business that helps UK companies hire people in South Africa. Since the latest minimum wage hike, we've seen a 300% rise in UK roles being offshored through our agency alone. I'm not saying that to boast. I'm saying it because someone needs to be honest about what it means.
This week, Alan Milburn's report on Britain's NEET crisis revealed that the number of young people not in education, employment, or training could rise to 1.25 million within five years, up from roughly one in eight today to one in six.
The report describes how the first rung of the career ladder has thinned, and for too many young people it is now out of reach. There are already 1.6 million fewer low and medium-skilled jobs in the economy than there were a decade ago. And the trend is accelerating.
It's no wonder. National Insurance hikes have added close to £1,000 per employee per year in additional payroll costs. The minimum wage now stands at £12.71 an hour — a rise of more than a pound in two years. AI-driven disruption is quietly eroding the business case for certain roles entirely.
Business owners are not sending jobs abroad because they are indifferent to Britain's young people. They are doing it because the costs have stopped adding up.
The shift to remote working has accelerated this. Once location stopped mattering as much, businesses were left asking a question they hadn't needed to ask before: why here?
For many, the answer has become increasingly difficult to justify.
The roles going overseas are not an obscure corner of the jobs market. They mostly span entry-level roles across sales and business development, customer support, marketing, finance, administration, and increasingly sectors not traditionally associated with offshoring — legal services, healthcare, and back-office functions in construction and hospitality. These are precisely the kinds of roles a young person lands in their first or second job. The roles where careers begin.
The irony is not lost on me. I am aware of the contradiction in being someone who talks about protecting British jobs while playing a part in moving them elsewhere. But as a Brit and a father, I am genuinely concerned about the future of work in this country.
While I welcome the minimum wage hike, ministers need to be equally honest about the pressure it adds to employers already juggling higher National Insurance, weak growth, and AI-driven disruption. The danger is that the very roles young people rely on to get a foot on the career ladder are the roles most likely to move overseas. The Government cannot on one hand champion young workers and on the other ignore the conditions pushing their opportunities abroad. If it wants better-paid jobs in Britain, it has to make it easier and more affordable for businesses to create those jobs here.
Alan Milburn's findings aren't complicated. Young people want to work. The jobs they need are disappearing. Someone in Government needs to connect those two facts and act on them.
Until that happens, businesses like mine will keep growing.
Alex Fenton is Group CEO of The Legends Agency, an offshoring recruitment firm specialising in South African talent. He is also Partner at finance broker Funding Bay/FBX Capital.
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