One million young people thrown on the scrap heap.

That’s what the government announced last week, with new figures showing that one in eight 16 to 24-year-olds are currently not in education, employment or training.

Keir Starmer and the big business politicians pretend to care. But they don’t know what it’s like to compete with one thousand other applicants for a single entry-level job. They don’t know what it’s like to apply for hundreds of jobs without success or even a reply from a human, as society gradually convinces you there isn’t a place for you.

On their £100k salaries and MPs’ expenses, Starmer and his Labour government just make things worse. Take their decision to increase university tuition fees – how is that going to get more young people into education?

Now Labour is saying they’ll shelve their manifesto pledge to bring the minimum wage for 18 to 20-year-olds in line with the national minimum wage for over-21s. Why should anyone be paid less money for doing the same work?

And Labour also wants to bring in 300,000 unpaid ‘work experience’ placements for young people seeking work, which would force us to work in return for measly benefit payments. Free, publicly subsidised labour for the bosses, and poverty ‘wages’ for the young!

Ever since Labour was elected in 2024, they have tried to rule on behalf of the capitalist elites, attempting to maximise the bosses’ profits by attacking the living standards of young people and the working class. No wonder Labour is crashing and burning in office just like the Tories before them.

It is clear that Labour and the capitalists want to exploit the crisis facing young people in order to carry out even more attacks on our futures, and to boost big business profits even further.

Nigel Farage and Reform UK pretend to stand against the ‘establishment’. But what kind of ‘anti-establishment’ party welcomes in five former Tory MPs, with an ex-banker leader who accepted a £5 million ‘gift’ from a crypto billionaire? Reform just pose as an alternative, stoking racist division in an attempt to exploit the mass anger at Labour’s austerity.

Labour, Reform and all the establishment parties – they stand for the super-rich and their capitalist system. None of them have solutions to the crisis of mass youth unemployment and underfunded education, because that would require massive investment, which the capitalists are not willing to concede in an era of stagnating economic growth, rising inflation, and historically high levels of public and private debt.

The bosses and their politicians are going on the offensive. Our side, the working class, has to do the same – pointing to the enormous wealth, resources and technology that exist in Britain and internationally, and fighting for that to be in our hands so that we could democratically develop a socialist plan to provide a decent future for all young people.

During the strike wave in 2022-23, workers in Britain took strike action through their trade unions at a level not seen for three decades, forcing money into workers’ pockets that the Tories – and behind them, the capitalists – said was not there.

As rising inflation once again threatens to further erode the conditions of all workers, there is an urgent need for united trade union action that links the fight against the cost-of-living crisis to the fight for good jobs, apprenticeships and education for all.

Young people getting organised as part of this would have an enormous impact. Any young person in work should join and get active in a trade union, to be part of a collective fightback against Labour and the bosses.

Socialist Students wants to unite the fightback in schools, colleges and university campuses with Socialist Students. We are a student-led socialist organisation which our members help to build in over forty institutions across the UK.

School and college students could also join the fightback by building fighting student unions. A student union is a group of students who want to get organised to change things. By bringing students together in the fight for a decent future, a union can harness students’ collective strength and help get students organised alongside young workers and the wider working class.

We initiated the Youth Walkout Against Trump campaign in September 2025, with the aim of getting young people organised in the fight for a socialist future free of war, austerity, and the constant instability and uncertainty of capitalism. We have also helped to build the national Funding Not Fees campaign for fully funded, free education – not cuts, tuition fees and a lifetime of student debt.

If you are a young person looking for a socialist programme and organisation to fight for a real socialist plan for our futures, join us!