Jobs designed around fluctuating conditions

At the centre of the review's disability employment proposals is a 'flexi-job' model borrowed from Denmark. It would guarantee a paid job to every disabled or chronically ill young person who joins, while letting them decide how many hours they work - in some cases starting with as few as four hours a week - with the government topping up their wages.

The review frames this as a response to the realities young people with disabilities describe: fluctuating medical conditions, little prior work experience, and the need for part-time roles that build confidence before hours grow.

The flexi-jobs proposal sits alongside two other planks:

• •employment subsidies to make taking on disabled 16- to 24-year-olds more attractive to employers
• •intensive skills support running alongside the job itself

Why the review targets disabled Neets

The case for the scheme rests on official figures about the scale of the problem the review was asked to solve. About a million young people are now classified as Neet - not in education, employment or training - and nearly half of them, 45%, are disabled or in ill health.

Other numbers sharpen the picture:

• •disabled young people are three times as likely to be Neet as their non-disabled peers
• •nearly half of 24-year-old Neets have never worked
• •among disabled Neets, the most common conditions are depression, bad nerves or anxiety at 23.8%, autism at 22.7%, and other health problems or disabilities at 18.5%

Carving one job into three

A further recommendation is 'job carving': taking a single entry-level role, splitting it into its component parts and matching a young person to each. The review's example is a retail job made up of stock-filling, till work and locking up - under the proposal it would become three separate jobs, each filled by a young person matched to one task.

Around that, the review will call for more supported internships, placements, specialist job matching and coaching, and employer backing for workplace adjustments. It will also urge large employers to adopt employment targets for disabled 16- to 24-year-olds voluntarily, and is expected to stop short of statutory quotas.

Milburn has previously argued for what he calls a "turbo-charging" of specialist internships for young people with special educational needs leaving school and college.

Milburn: a 'lost generation' at risk

Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister leading the review, has described soaring numbers of Neets as a moral and economic crisis, and warned that failing to tackle youth disengagement from work risks creating a "lost generation".

He has also pushed back on what he terms "myths" about young people being "snowflakes", arguing that the mental health crisis is real and that most youngsters want to work. In his interim report earlier this year, he argued that abandoning Covid-era youngsters with depression, anxiety, autism and ADHD would have, in his words, a "scarring effect on their life chances and lifetime earnings".

The review reports this month, with its recommendations including voluntary employer targets rather than statutory quotas for disabled 16- to 24-year-olds.