CROYDON COMMENTARY: Last week, a review commissioned by the government warned of ‘a lost generation’ of young adults facing long-term unemployment. Here, NEELAM AHMED, pictured right, explains the heartbreak of life as an out-of-work graduate in 2026
A friend recently sent me a graduate job advert. By the time I clicked on the link half an hour later, applications had already closed.
That moment captured the reality of searching for work in 2026. Opportunities exist, but so does fierce competition. When people ask what I do for work, I usually tell them I’m freelancing. It’s easier than explaining that I graduated three years ago and still don’t have a full-time job.
At 26, I have become skilled at avoiding the question.
Most of my friends are building careers, travelling, getting engaged or buying homes. My time is spent doing job applications, receiving rejection emails and with long periods of uncertainty. I am one of the young people who are labelled as a NEET: not in education, employment or training.
That label’s never felt right. It suggests inactivity or a lack of ambition. My experience has been the opposite.
Not NEET: the stark statistics of a failing jobs market
Since graduating in 2022 with a journalism degree, I have spent the past four years applying for jobs, volunteering, completing work experience, rewriting CVs and cover letters, and trying to break into an industry where entry-level opportunities often demand experience before they offer opportunity. Like many people my age, I grew up believing there was a pathway to success: work hard, go to university, get a degree and build a career. The reality has felt very different.
Last week, former minister Alan Milburn released his interim report for the government on Britain’s growing number of young people classified as NEET. Around 1million young people across the UK are now not in employment, education or training.
In Croydon, youth unemployment stands at 15.8% – the highest rate of any London borough. And London has the highest youth unemployment rates in the country. Behind every statistic is a person.
I graduated during the covid years, so am part of what has been described as the “Bedroom Generation”. The years that should have been spent building confidence, making contacts and exploring careers were instead spent staring at screens. University was spent attending lectures via Zoom. Networking opportunities disappeared. The transition from education to employment felt less like a pathway, and more like a cliff edge. What frustrated me most was the assumption that education alone would open doors.
I come from a working-class immigrant family and was the first woman in my family to attend university. Nobody worked in journalism. Nobody explained graduate recruitment, networking, internships or industry contacts. Many people inherit professional knowledge through family networks and social connections. Others have to learn it through trial and error. I learned much of it through rejection.
Warning shots: Alan Milburn’s interim report has shocked many with its findings
When I eventually secured a placement at Channel 4 News, I felt proud, but also out of place.
After years of struggling to get opportunities, I found myself questioning whether I belonged there at all. Prolonged unemployment has a way of damaging confidence.
Perhaps the hardest part is the uncertainty. It is waking up every day without knowing whether your next application will be successful, or when your circumstances will finally change.
This is where discussions about youth unemployment often fall short. The stereotype of a NEET is someone who lacks ambition or motivation. But many young people under that label are applying, interviewing, volunteering, networking and retraining. They are not disconnected from society. They are struggling to gain a foothold within it.
Simon Hinde, programme director of journalism at the University of the Arts London, believes the term NEET is misleading. “I think it’s quite reductive,” he told me.
“It carries a sense that people are somehow content not to be working. It ignores the fact that most young people are desperate for work and are trying very hard to find it.”
There is no single reason why Britain’s NEET population has grown. Covid disrupted education and early careers. Graduate jobs have become more competitive, while employers increasingly expect experience before offering employment.
If 1million young people are now classified as NEET, the question is no longer whether individuals are trying hard enough. The question is whether something deeper has changed in the relationship between education, work and adulthood.
The acronym may be useful for policymakers, but it tells us very little about the lives behind the statistics. Years after graduating, I am still writing, volunteering, learning and searching for opportunities. I am still trying to build a career.
And I am still knocking on the door, hoping somebody eventually lets me in.
- Neelam Ahmed is a journalism graduate currently undertaking work with Inside Croydon
- Anyone can write a Croydon Commentary, a platform for our readers to offer their personal views and experiences about what matters to them in and around our corner of south London. To submit an article for consideration for publication, email us at inside.croydon@btinternet.com, or post your comment to an Inside Croydon article that has caught your attention
Recent Croydon Commentary columns:
- Perry didn’t ‘fix the finances’. He’s increased debt to £1.7bn
- This is where ‘Don’t rock the boat’ has become official mantra
- Uniformed guards are making our town centre more hostile
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
PAID ADS: To advertise your services or products to our 10,000 weekday visitors to the site, as featured on Google News Showcase, email us inside.croydon@btinternet.com for our unbeatable ad rates
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2026, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for an EIGHTH time in nine years, in Private Eye magazine’s annual round-up of civic cock-ups
- Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
write a blog about your experience, that way you are demonstrating your passion for writing and your talent – lots of non-journalism jobs are in need for ambitionous people with invastigative skills and the ability to word these professionally, f.e. in business development. Good luck!
Well done getting this far, and stick at it Neelam! You clearly have substantial writing talent. Must be very demoralizing to be a graduate today and face so much competition, and particularly difficult to have been at uni during covid. Many highly successful people hit a low point before they get onto an upward trajectory, and no doubt this is yours.
It might be totally out of the question for you right now, but I enjoyed uni much more the second time doing my masters. It’s not cheap so probably not a consideration for now, but maybe something to keep on the horizon! It was a huge turning point in my life. In the mean time, keep writing for iC and keep applying for jobs!