A sustainable workforce needs to work for people at both ends, and throughout the middle
Two apparently contradictory workforce conversations are taking place simultaneously. In one, governments and employers are considering how people can remain economically active for longer as populations age. In the other, growing numbers of younger people are struggling to establish themselves in work at all. Taken separately, these can look like different policy problems…viewed together, they expose a deeper question about how well our employment systems support people across the working life course.
Recent UK evidence illustrates the tension. The Office for National Statistics figures show that an estimated 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 were not in employment, education or training during April to June 2026. That represented 13% of the age group. Although the figure fell by 30,000 compared with the previous quarter, it remained 30,000 higher than a year earlier. The ONS also advises caution around short-term movements in these estimates because of sampling variability.
At the same time, research reported in August from Lancaster University’s Work Foundation found that more than one in three UK employers surveyed had reduced entry-level opportunities during the previous year, with AI and automation among the factors affecting the changing market.
These are important signals, but they should not become another invitation to describe younger people themselves as the problem.
Are young people unready for work, or is work becoming harder to enter?
Much contemporary commentary about younger workers focuses on whether Generation Z is “work ready”. Concerns are raised about communication, professionalism, resilience, expectations and interpersonal skills.
Some of those concerns may reflect genuine changes in education, technology and early work experience, but there is a danger in allowing an economic and organisational problem to become a generational character judgement.
Entry-level employment serves a purpose beyond filling junior vacancies, it is one of the ways people learn how work works.
-
Judgement develops through experience.
-
Professional confidence develops through participation.
-
Communication improves through interaction.
-
Organisational understanding develops by being inside organisations.
If employers simultaneously reduce entry-level opportunities and expect new entrants to arrive possessing capabilities traditionally developed through work, we create a difficult circular problem:
People need experience to enter work, but need to enter work to acquire experience. Technology may intensify that tension. If AI increasingly undertakes some of the routine tasks through which people historically learned professions, organisations will need to consider how tomorrow’s experienced workers acquire experience in the first place.
At the other end, we are asking people to stay, demographic ageing is creating pressure for longer working lives.
Employers are being encouraged to retain skills and experience, policymakers are considering economic participation at older ages, and organisations are thinking about retirement, reskilling, health, flexibility and the retention of institutional knowledge.
Again, these are important challenges, but place the two conversations side by side. At one end of working life – How do we help people get in? – at the other – How do we help people stay?
And between them sits a much larger question – How do we enable people to continue learning, contributing and progressing throughout increasingly long and varied careers? That is a different workforce challenge.
Moving beyond competing generations
It is tempting to frame labour-market pressures as competition between age groups, as if older people work longer, does that reduce opportunities for younger people?
If organisations concentrate upon youth employment, are older workers overlooked? Those questions encourage a zero-sum interpretation of the workforce.
Age inclusion offers a different perspective. A sustainable workforce should be capable of enabling entry, development, transition, progression, reinvention and retention at different points throughout working life.
That requires organisations to think beyond generational programmes towards workforce systems.
-
How are people brought into work?
-
How is knowledge transferred?
-
How do employees develop?
-
How can careers change direction?
-
How do people maintain skills as technology evolves?
-
How is experience retained without preventing new opportunity?
-
How do different generations learn from one another?
These are connected questions.
The middle matters too
There is another danger in concentrating only on younger and older workers, we can lose sight of everyone in between.
People in their thirties, forties and fifties may be navigating caring responsibilities, management transitions, career changes, reskilling, redundancy, health changes or entirely new ambitions. Working-life policy should not require people to belong to a particular age category before their circumstances become visible. The objective should instead be to create employment systems capable of responding to a greater variety of working lives. That means moving from an age-group mentality towards a working-life-course mentality.
Designing a labour market people can move through
The challenge facing employers is therefore larger than youth employment or older-worker retention considered separately, it is whether the pathways through working life still function.
-
can people enter?
-
can they learn?
-
can they progress?
-
can they change direction?
-
can they return?
-
can they continue contributing?
-
and can organisations benefit from their capabilities throughout that journey?