Same. (Or, at least, half right).

New data for 1st half of 25-26 shows 15% drop in adults doing English & maths in FE, due to Govt dropping it in apprenticeships. Achievements have halved since 2010. Reminder: 9m adults in England have low literacy or numeracy. Current trends, 25 years+ to help all. Harms inclusion & productivity.

In spite of all the talk of Claude Code and Codex meaning the end of humans writing code, software job adverts are actually going up, according to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's crunching of millions of job ads for this week's The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/7325...

Great news: 1.3 million people have been lifted out of poverty this morning! All thanks to a change in the statistics. After changing how income data is gathered, the DWP now believes it was over-estimating 'low income' levels by at least a million people in recent years, including 400k children.

useful Substack identifying the UK productivity problem as more on the side of demand for innovation than supply of it open.substack.com/pub/jundu1/p...

Updated DWP evidence on impact of offering extra Work Coach support to people on UC Health. Summary: small +ve impact for low cost intervention for large group. Shorter summary: offering help to those that want it makes a difference, worth doing, doesn’t solve everything.

My column this week: on how pensioners hold up our civic life (and why Gen X pensioners won’t be able to easily replace them)

One thing I didn't mention earlier. While employment's fairly flat overall, most of the growth is in more public sector areas like health & social care. More private sector areas like retail, hospitality & manufacturing have been falling. Another warning sign. Full briefing below.

Interesting today programme piece on regional inequality - but I worry we are still fighting old battles Spatial inequality basically flatlining, the problem is growth - still talking about London as some sort of high growth city makes us complacent

"Worryingly, the number of young people not in employment or full-time education remains stubbornly stuck at 1.25 million." ✍️ L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social responds to today's labour market statistics from ONS.

1. Fairly flat set of labour market stats today. Some further easing, including in earnings growth, but any falls seem much smaller than pre-Christmas data. This leaves underlying challenges, like needing another 2m people in work to hit Govt 80% employment rate target. And economic risks ahead.

Check out L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social's response to the Government's expansion of support for young people in: 🗞️ @bigissue.com: www.bigissue.com/news/employm... 🗞️ @feweek.bsky.social: feweek.co.uk/employers-of...

I missed this: Govt published LPC's remit for the 2027 minimum wage rates on Monday (the rates coming in next month are already set). Main take-away is Govt wants a more cautious approach to the youth rates. It has dialed up the 'worry about employment' bit of the remit. www.gov.uk/government/p...

The Chancellor's Mais lecture makes an interesting argument. That the Employment Rights Act et al create two way flexibility & should incentivise employers to retain and train. I've heard this before but not, I think, from ministers. Could it work?

More policy re c1m 16-24s who are NEET. In short, good news 22-24s will get more help & there's more financial incentives for employers to hire young people. But we need to do more to engage the 3 in 4 NEETs not on unemployment-linked benefits & employer incentives are rowing against economic tides

"We need to do more to systematically engage every young person who is NEET, regardless of benefit status." ✍️ L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social explores how we can support NEET young people in FE News. "This is too important not to give it our all. There are one million reasons to act."

More thoughts from me for @fenews.bsky.social on the Government's NEET announcements. In short, some good stuff on employer incentives & widening eligibility for the Job Guarantee to 22-24 year olds. But much more to do on wider context for employers & engaging the 3 in 4 NEETs not on u/e benefits.

“We know being out of work and education when you’re young has a really lasting effect on your career, so the effects of this will reverberate across the decades if we don’t do something about it.” L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social comments on the expansion of the Youth Guarantee in the FT.

This is the flipside of the £ incentives to take on young apprentices. Ultimately need to make choices in a fixed budget. And an apprenticeship is not the answer to everything. Not to say mgt doesn't matter, it does. Good news: employers can still invest in these, the levy is a floor not a ceiling.

More policy re c1m 16-24s who are NEET. In short, good news 22-24s will get more help & there's more financial incentives for employers to hire young people. But we need to do more to engage the 3 in 4 NEETs not on unemployment-linked benefits & employer incentives are rowing against economic tides

"The Government is right to extend help like the Job Guarantee to those aged 22-24, as this group is more likely to be NEET than the 18-21 year olds the policy was previously focused on." 💬 L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social responds to DWP's announcement on expanding the Youth Guarantee.

Our new report for @nuffieldfoundation.org identifies an overreliance on mandatory and compliance training in UK workplaces at the expense of more in-depth upskilling. 🗞️ Check out coverage of the report in @feweek.bsky.social: feweek.co.uk/workplace-tr...

✂️ College leaders have warned millions of pounds must now be diverted to fund thousands of extra learners after ministers ‘betrayed’ the sector with a real-terms funding cut feweek.co.uk/population-s...

Some good data work. cepr.org/voxeu/column...

Classic journey of vocational qual reform. Step one: these will be gold standard with English & maths requirements, more taught hours & work placement. Step two: take up low so water down each in turn. Reminder: full fat T levels still had fewer taught hours than e.g Germany.

Time to put the fluffy stuff about community and relationships aside so the grown-ups can take charge? No: my latest piece explains why this would be a dangerous mistake. howtorunacountry.substack.com/p/what-to-do...

Lots of things are great in this country. But driving on potholed roads to collect my daily ration of bottled water along with a queue of others on an industrial estate because a broken pipe means no water at home starts to shake your faith (and mood) a bit. *Resists urge to rant about Thames Water*

"Together, we can build a future where everyone is able to learn throughout life. And together, we can still build the College of the Future." ✍️ Reflecting on #CollegesWeek2026 L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social explores why we must continue calling for a more joined-up all-age skills system.

Having now got the data for the latest quarter from the UK data service, here are the percentages NEET and not NEET by individual year of age. The percentages go up by age, and are low (by comparison with 22-24s) for 16-17s. N.B. ONS stats distribute missings to the other groups.

This is a great blog from @hughesdavid.bsky.social on the difference adult education makes. 👇

Week of VocTech is proudly backed by leading organisations across the skills, training, and adult learning ecosystem Want to get involved with the Week of VocTech activity happening from 16-20 March 2026? Explore the full programme of in-person and online events: https://weekofvoctech.co.uk/events

New data show NEET rates are stabilising, but remain too high. Almost 1 in 7 YP estimated to be NEET, 957k 16-24 year olds. Within this there's a rise in the number unemployed & falls in those economically inactive. More YP are looking for work, but facing a tougher labour market.

“Rises in the number of unemployed Neets and falls in the number of economically inactive shows more young people are looking for work but many are facing challenges finding a job.” 📰 Read @stephenevans.bsky.social's comments on NEET levels in @telegraph.co.uk: www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

Good news: NEET numbers look to be stabilising. Bad news (with data caveats): more are looking for work but need the jobs to find, and rates are higher for 21-24 year olds most of whom aren't eligible for the 18-21 Youth Guarantee in England.

But a not-much-change stats release is also good chance to zoom out and think bigger about where the UK stands vs other countries. We're not the worst, but look what those top countries achieve. The NEET rate in the Netherlands is a *third* as high as the UK's. That's just such a big difference.

The economy's capacity to absorb AI is heavily constrained by people, institutions, culture. We are not going to see a sudden disruption. This time isn't different (a bit faster maybe). We have time to get policy right but not unlimited amounts. www.mckinsey.com/uk/our-insig...

"Almost one in seven young people is not in education, employment or training, risking long-term damage to their career prospects." 💬 L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social responds to today's ONS data on young people not in education, employment or training.

New data show NEET rates are stabilising, but remain too high. Almost 1 in 7 YP estimated to be NEET, 957k 16-24 year olds. Within this there's a rise in the number unemployed & falls in those economically inactive. More YP are looking for work, but facing a tougher labour market.

🗣️ Plans to cut funding for English language lessons to avoid alleged 'segregation' have been approved in Greater Lincolnshire, amid concerns about “serious harm” to local community integration. https://feweek.co.uk/fundamentally-wrong-greater-lincolnshire-leaders-approve-esol-cuts/

#AI adoption drives productivity growth, right? Just see the chart below (R2 = .37, p < 0.01)! Wait - have a closer look. AI-exposed sectors' productivity grew faster until Q1 2020, pre-ChatGPT. Check out the real story in our upcoming article (will post link here when live). #dataisbeautiful

🚨New report from us BCG CfG today🚨 we take a sector & firm view of UK productivity growth over past 3 decades, including benchmarking against peers. UK is falling back from global frontier but for quite different reasons in different sectors 1/

Registrations are open for the Employment and Skills Convention 2026! This year, we'll explore how to grow opportunity and unlock potential in a changing workforce. 📆 Thursday 2 July 🕑 All day Thank you to our sponsors Maximus, Ingeus, Edge Foundation and Youth Futures Foundation. #EmpSkills26

Join the L&W team! There's still time to apply to be a: ⭐ Deputy Director - to help us generate insights that enable more people to move into and progress through better work ⭐ Head of Research - to lead innovative, impactful research and evaluation projects on employment and skills #hiring

Important & well made point. Declining graduate premium tells us at least as much about the state of the economy as about an oversupply of graduates. I wonder if rising minimum wage, compressing the distribution, also has an impact? Same with overqualification; flipside is underutilisation of skills

Really interesting back and forth by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com and @sarahoconnorft.ft.com in their newsletter today:

"More men are looking for work, and the sectors where vacancies and jobs have declined more are male-dominated." Read L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social's comments on male unemployment in @telegraph.co.uk. 📰

Normally you'd expect growing sectors to have to increase pay to attract people. But sectors with the fastest pay growth have seen some of the biggest falls in payroll employment. Partly, I'd say, because employer costs (NMW & NICs) are rising faster than employers can rise prices or productivity.

📉🤯📉 Should we be panicking about the labour market? I have commandeered the L&W monthly briefing + our expert team to help me think this question through. 🤯📉🤯 You can read the whole thing here - but here are some headline thoughts... learningandwork.org.uk/labour-marke...

Thinking of a career in think tanks? On Wednesday, we're hosting a webinar for undergraduates or those with similar experience interested in working in the sector. We'll have speakers from numerous organisations sharing their insight and experience. Register here 👉 buff.ly/a3cO0df

On pay, PAYE data (which is partial, e.g. doesn't include most self-employment) shows lower paid have generally had bigger pay rises than average or higher paid as minimum wage has risen over last decade. These are nominal data & overall growth slow so not claiming 'we've never had it so good'!