Generation Z is as perplexing as it is irritating.
Politically, we’re all over the shop. On one end of the youth scale you have the legions of young men and women on the extreme Left, enamored by the easy answers and ‘hopeful’ rhetoric served up by figures like Zack Polanski. On the other, you’ll find ‘looksmaxxing’ fascists, existing in a virtual reality of technicolour video edits venerating Adolf Hitler and Julius Caesar.
If we seem mad, it’s probably because we are. And who can blame us?
The campaign group Looking for Growth – whose founder, Lawrence Newport, writes an excellent column for CapX – has created a youth unemployment dashboard, detailing rates across England. The numbers make for grim reading. Youth unemployment across England averages a worrying 15.2%, and is highest in the North East at 22.5%, and lowest in the South West at 10%.
Data published this week by the Office for National Statistics showed that Rachel Reeves is the David Blaine of the labour market, having made thousands of jobs disappear. In the year to November 2025, 155,000 jobs were wiped out, with a whopping 200,000 having vanished in total since the Chancellor’s first Budget.
Where have these jobs gone?
Since Labour were elected, they have given the business world more mixed signals than your non-committal Gen Z partner. In the run-up to the general election, Labour, and Reeves in particular, were keen to stress that their attitude towards the private sector had changed. And they expended a great deal of political energy doing so.
No longer would the Labour Party regard the business world as an instrument of class oppression, but rather a necessary and respected ally in the fight for economic growth. In a speech to business leaders at Rolls Royce in May 2024, Reeves said that she would ‘lead the most pro-growth, pro-business Treasury our country has ever seen’.
Predictably, the Government now famed for its U-turns (which have come at a combined cost of £8.2 billion to the economy), has done the opposite. In her first Budget, the Chancellor raised employer national insurance from 13.8% to 15%, amounting to a £25bn raid.
Oh, and the minimum wage has risen too. The Centre for Policy Studies has calculated that this, combined with the increases to employer national insurance, will mean that by April 2026, it will cost a business £25,852 annually to hire a full-time, minimum-wage worker over 21, up from £24,806 in 2025 and £22,438 in 2024. And this is before we get to the Employment Rights Act, which ramps up the regulatory burden faced by firms.
The cumulative effect of Labour’s intervention in the workplace does not empower destitute workers to take on their greedy bosses, it just makes it more expensive for businesses to take on new hires. Recruitment activity has already slumped, and for young people leaving university and ready to take on their first job, it hits them the hardest.
Try as they do to convince us they’ve changed, Labour are patently captive to their worst, misguided instincts about the role of the state in improving people’s lives. It is hard to see that changing. Yet in 2029, if Reform’s lead holds, we could have the most right-wing government for some time – perhaps ever. Could this bring enhanced prospects for Britain’s youth?
Regarding the Government’s employment legislation, both the Conservatives and Reform UK are clear: it’s no good. Kemi Badenoch and her shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith, have been steadfast critics of the Act and pledged to dismantle it to revive job creation. Reform’s MPs have too consistently voted against the legislation.
So under either a Tory or Reform administration – or a combination of the two – the worst excesses of Labour’s crusade against youth employment will be stemmed. What’s good for business is good for young people. All sorted? Not quite.
The issues facing young people’s access to the jobs market is just one facet of a broader social contract geared against the youth.
If, by some miracle, a young person is able to get themselves on to the employment ladder, they will soon find their pay packets going towards funding gold-plated state pensions via the triple lock, which since its introduction in 2010 has cost taxpayers £78bn. As it stands, neither the Conservatives nor Reform have shown any willingness to right this intergenerational injustice. When Labour announced plans to reform winter fuel payments, rightwingers in both shades of blue threw a fit. Bear in mind that the Government’s plan to limit the eligibility for the winter fuel allowance would only have saved £1.5bn annually, a fraction of the amount we spend on old-age benefits.
Then of course there’s the perennial issue of housing. Again, providing a young person actually finds a job, they will often end up living in fetid rental accommodation with a motley crew of similarly disenchanted young people with whom they were matched on Spare Room. In London, the average rate for this pleasure is £350 a week. Reforming the planning system to boost building and increase the supply of available homes was promised by Labour, but across the country, they’ve failed to deliver meaningful results. The Tories and Reform have promised to make housebuilding a priority too, but given how deferential the last Conservative government was to propertied Nimbys, and how scant on detail Reform’s housing plans are, young people wouldn’t be blamed for reserving their optimism.
It’s easy to bash today’s young people for their eccentricity and self-indulgence, but their plight should concern us all. That both Reform and the Conservatives are taking young people’s job prospects seriously is to be celebrated, but they must go further. Tackling the issues young people face on the housing market and in the welfare system would benefit us all and significantly boost our growth prospects, and while the next generation will always seem a little weird, with the right policies, they might at least be a bit less mad.
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