An LBC clip has caused a stir on X. A young woman on PIP benefit says that jobs need to be meaningful. She is a clear example of a phenomenon known as elite overproduction. If the system were functioning, she would never have gone to university and never have been educated into a state of perpetual uselessness. She'd have found herself teaching at a local primary school, married, then had children of her own. Instead we funnel women into social sciences where they do the maximum amount of societal harm.
Some would have it that she is a clear candidate for one of Reform’s welfare chain gangs, cleaning up graffiti and picking up litter. In her case, they might have a point.
But at the same time, I do think she has something of a point. I am not unsympathetic to her plight. Not all jobs are worth taking just for the sake of having a job, especially if it isn’t sustainable for employee and employer. The churn is part of the reason why recruitment practices are so onerous. I am not a subscriber to the idea that you have to take any job even if there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Not every job leads to better things.
In this, I’ve had my fair share of experience. Before moving to the tech desk while doing a software engineering HND in night class, I worked in PC World on the shop floor with a commission rate of 0.01% where you were trained and expected to use aggressive American sales techniques on West Yorkshire people on a rainy Wednesday morning when they just wanted a printer cartridge. A third of the workforce quit in the first three month after opening - and rightly so. There was no fun it, no intellectual reward, no financial reward, and fuck all dignity in being lectured on your sales performance by some Blackberry-sporting regional manager with acne.
I'm not going to "champion" that bullshit. I want an economy where talented young people have the space to develop and experiment without having to demean themselves with bullshit menial work in companies that treat them like garbage. I don't demand our young people to lower their life expectations that far. This specious notion that any work is good work is a Victorian working class hangover we need to rid ourselves of, and start channelling young people into places where they can thrive.
Moreover, I don't think it unreasonable for young people who spend thousands on their education to have higher expectations of the labour market. The people who should be held accountable are those telling them that their social sciences degrees are worth the paper they're written on.
The lady in the video remarks that work can be good for mental health (helping to establish a routine and a work ethic) but she is also right in saying bad work can be detrimental. In fact, the unemployment system does make allowance for skilled people to find appropriate work before it imposes sanctions of any kind. The same should apply to any disability benefit - because forcing people into any old job regardless of its suitability can exacerbate mental and physical conditions.
The one way to ensure people stay in work is to help them into the right kind of work that's suited to their skills and temperament. The notion that any job is a good job only applies if its physically and mentally sustainable.
In my view, Reform's welfare for work policy amounts to little more than welfare chain gangs, coming from an entirely reactionary and vindictive place, but someone like this could be funnelled into charity office work like Citizens Advice (which can be both edifying and meaningful) which has a number of third sector career avenues.
This is more or less what I did. I was working a shitty job in PC World tech desk that was so miserable and abusive I quit, signed on the dole, and worked at a local disability charity for nearly two years. I built them a casework management system in Visual Basic - the first time I ever got my hands on a proper SQL server which gave me the skills I needed to later work at SSE, HBOS, Atkins and Airbus. It's been a net benefit to the taxpayer - and more useful to me than getting into debt for a useless degree. It just wasn't an official scheme. Forcing people into dumb menial jobs they can't actually do doesn't serve anyone.
As such, I think with a little adjustment, Reform's welfare for work policy could work. Right now it comes from a vindictive place - pressing young people into graffiti removal. A bit of joined up thinking would not hurt here. Most people on the right complain about taxpayer funding of charities, but a lot of charities are actually outsourced council service providers. If we want to cut what we spend on them (which we should) there should be a formal process whereby the can submit vacancies to welfare offices, that caseworkers can funnel claimants into.
Certainly the software development work I did for that disability charity set me up for the rest of my career. I also built a wheelchair hire database and a document management system, which provided me endless reusable code I deployed in other jobs. Call them third sector apprenticeships.
The bottom line is that there is always going to be a class of people much like this lady, who simply aren't useful to the world of commerce, and don't belong there either. The tough love approach doesn't really work in an economy where the deck is stacked against you and you're competing with immigrants to do intellectually stultifying work that isn't even financially sustainable. These are not the days when boomers could fall out of school and into a career path. Once you leave the system now, you are left to your own devices, with massive competition for any job - and there is zero career progression.
As far as disability is concerned, I think its right that we recognise that some able bodied people for a myriad of complex reasons just aren't able to do a normal jobs. I can't. I'm "on the spectrum" and I need several hours of solitude in a day in order to function. My Substack and other writing gigs on the side pays me just enough that I don't have to sign on and don't have to do a bullshit office job. I actually would rather starve than go back into software development - because I have done it to death. But it took me a while to find this niche.
You will get no argument from me that some people do just need a kick up the bum, and I am not saying that there aren't shirkers, but I do respect the fact that not everybody is cut from the same cloth, and the system has to show some flex in recognition of that. We help them to find an appropriate way to contribute.
Working on the presumption that every NEET is a workshy scrounger is a faulty premise - and I think everybody loses if we're shunting people into unsustainable menial work. A good system is one that can tell the difference.
I could bore on at length on this particular subject having been a product of NEETism myself, in a working class Yorkshire culture where it was the norm in my peer group. Instead of republishing my X writings on the matter here, I asked Grok to look at todays posts and collate into a basic NEET policy...
A Manifesto Policy for NEETs: Matching People to Contribution, Not Chain Gangs
Britain has nearly a million young people aged 16-24 who are not in education, employment or training. In April to June 2026 there were 981,000 NEETs, or 13.0 per cent of the age group. That is 30,000 more than a year earlier, even after a modest quarterly fall. Among 18- to 24-year-olds the rate stands at 15.2 per cent. Young men account for most of the recent rise. These numbers are not an abstract statistic. They represent talent left idle, skills unrecognised, and a welfare system that too often treats every claimant as a workshy scrounger who simply needs a shove into the nearest menial job.
The assumption is false and costly. Disabled young people are more than three times as likely to be NEET as their non-disabled peers (29.6 per cent versus 8.7 per cent). In recent data, 45 per cent of NEETs aged 16-24 were classed as disabled. Autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions feature prominently: among disabled NEETs, autism is one of the most common reported conditions. Autistic people of working age have an employment rate of only 34 per cent, compared with 55 per cent for all disabled people and 82 per cent for the non-disabled. Most want to work. The system is not designed for them.
The Problem with “Any Job Is a Good Job”
The old industrial-era idea that any paid work confers dignity has become a justification for placing people in roles they cannot sustain. Call centres, aggressive retail sales, warehouse shifts and generic office “team player” environments destroy motivation for those temperamentally unsuited to them. High turnover follows. Employers waste time on compelled applications generated by Jobcentre rules. Claimants cycle through failure, sanctions and deeper inactivity.
This is not an argument against work. It is an argument against unsustainable work. Some people need a firm push. Others, including many who are neurodivergent, highly skilled in narrow domains, or simply mismatched to the commercial office, require space to find a niche that uses their actual abilities. Forcing the second group into the first group’s solution produces neither taxpayers nor fulfilled lives. It produces more PIP claims, more long-term sickness, and more young people who would rather starve than return to a soul-crushing job they have already failed at.
Labour-market conditions have made the mismatch worse. Entry-level work has been compressed by cheap labour, automation and AI. Casual jobs that once let teenagers experiment and build habits have dwindled. Housing costs and wage stagnation mean even “skilled” early-career roles often fail to deliver independence. Telling bright 20-year-olds they must accept any vacancy or face destitution is not realism. It is a refusal to design a system that can tell the difference between idleness and incompatibility.
Principles for a Better System
A serious NEET policy starts from three facts. First, NEETs are heterogeneous. Some are work-ready and need only opportunity and pressure. Others need time, matching and a different kind of contribution. Second, contribution must be real. Society is entitled to expect something in return for support, but the something should build capability rather than merely punish. Third, the labour market itself must become more fluid so people can try, fail and move without being trapped.
The policy therefore combines carrot and stick, detection of ability, and structural reform.
Third-sector social apprenticeships.
Local charities and community organisations already deliver many outsourced council services: advice, disability support, casework, IT systems, document management. They should submit vacancies and structured placements to welfare offices. Caseworkers would match claimants to roles that use existing skills or develop new ones. A claimant who can build a database or manage case files contributes more, and learns more, than one picking litter. After a defined period the placement can convert to paid work or a recognised apprenticeship. Social charities should be predominantly volunteer-run where possible, reducing their grant dependency while creating a genuine pathway. This is not extra spending. It is redirecting existing welfare and charity budgets toward productive activity.
Skills recognition, not just conditionality.
The current system is poor at spotting latent ability. A young person who spends days building PCs from scrap or writing code for a local group is treated as idle. An effective service would identify those strengths early and route people toward compatible environments rather than the nearest warehouse. For those on disability benefits, the same principle applies: suitability matters. Forcing someone into work that immediately worsens a physical or mental condition is both cruel and fiscally stupid. Time-limited, supported job search for appropriate roles should precede sanctions, just as the unemployment system already allows for skilled claimants.
Labour-market fluidity.
Restore casual and part-time work for teenagers so they can experiment without formal contracts or high compliance costs. Cut employer National Insurance and reduce labour-market regulation that makes hiring and firing expensive. People stay in bad jobs because leaving is risky and alternatives are scarce. Fluidity lets them test different work without the fear that the next vacancy will be worse. It also reduces the flood of low-quality applications that burden employers.
Contribution with meaning.
Long-term claimants who are work-capable should contribute. The contribution should not default to performative community punishment. Placement in a functioning local organisation that needs skills such as administration, technical support or advice work meets the reciprocity test while building a CV that private employers will actually value. Those who refuse reasonable matched placements after support and time can face sanctions. Those who cannot hold conventional commercial jobs but can still contribute in structured settings should be enabled to do so.
What This Replaces
Punitive “welfare chain gangs” such as graffiti removal, litter picking or generic community service assigned without regard to ability treat symptoms while ignoring causes. They generate resentment, high dropout and little lasting attachment to work. They also ignore the reality that some people are temperamentally unsuited to the modern commercial workplace and will never thrive there. A system that cannot distinguish the workshy from the mismatched will keep producing both.
The alternative is not open-ended welfare. It is targeted matching plus labour-market reform. Young people who take longer to find their feet, the ones who bounce between agency jobs, quit abusive retail roles, or spend years on the dole while quietly acquiring real technical competence, should not be written off. History shows many later become net contributors once they land in the right environment. The cost of getting that matching wrong is a lost generation of potential plus a growing disability bill.
This approach also addresses the third-sector problem. Many charities now operate as contracted service providers rather than grant-dependent campaigners. Formalising a pipeline from welfare into those organisations simultaneously supplies labour, develops skills, and lets government reduce poorly targeted funding. It turns a source of complaint into a delivery mechanism.
Britain does not lack work that needs doing. It lacks a welfare and labour-market architecture that can place the right people into the right work without first grinding them down. Nearly a million NEETs is the result of treating everyone as interchangeable labour. A manifesto that wants lower welfare spending, higher employment and less wasted human capital must start by recognising that they are not. Match first. Then enforce. Then let the labour market itself become flexible enough that people can move when the match is wrong. That is how you turn personal failure stories into net fiscal and social gain.
I’ve worked in the unemployment sector and even suffered from ‘the dole’ in the distant past.
My experience working in the sector was of trying to help people without the tools to do so.
There was a shocking lack of confidence amongst about half the unemployed.
Those made redundant or dismissed had particular issues.
Then there were those suffering substance abuse who wanted to break the self destructive cycle.
There were those with mental and physical disability’s who (like substance abusers) wanted work as they thought it would change their lives.
In many cases it would have done just that.
They all needed degrees of psychiatric help.
But there was no help of that nature.
It was sad seeing people applying for work they could have done but who without help in sorting out their private lives would have little chance of getting it.
The disappointment in faces when letting staff know their latest negative application was painful to see.
Those working in the sector now are in a grim situation. It’s probably worse now than when I was involved.
The unemployed are in a vicious circle.
Disappointment, depression, sometimes substance abuse, spirits dimming, giving up, even early death.
The answer is:-
More jobs than applicants.
Professionals who can be directed to people needing help.
For some the gift of a normal working life, isn’t possible.
For those who need a flexible, relaxed atmosphere, give them subsidised, work where they can meet others and build a decent lifestyle is the only answer.
Good thought provoking essay. As a boomer it cuts both ways. One the one hand, we have to be honest and objective enough to recognize that NEETs and young people generally have it much tougher now, mostly not through their own making. And that simple solutions based on "in my day" are not the answer. On the other, we also have to re-establish a societal expectation and culture that there should be very few NEETs. This does, however, also require structural change to enable the culture change. And we have to also get to the underlying issues and root causes of the massive increase in neurodivergence and all that goes with it - again honestly, openly and objectively.