More than 40 UK retailers, including Aldi, Amazon, Asda, Greggs, John Lewis Partnership, Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Primark and Tesco, have pledged 11,305 work experience placements toward a sector-wide target of 100,000 jobs for young people classed as NEET (not in education, employment or training) by 2029, the British Retail Consortium announced September 8. The program, called Opening Shift, was built jointly with the Department for Work and Pensions and offers 18-to-24-year-olds two-to-four-week placements of 16 to 35 hours per week, with participants keeping Universal Credit throughout, a workplace “buddy” for support, and a guaranteed interview at the end.
Why it matters: nearly one million young people in the UK are currently NEET, and Alan Milburn, chair of the government’s Young People and Work Review, warned that figure could reach 1.25 million within five years without intervention. “Six in ten young people who are NEET have never had a job,” Milburn said, pointing to lack of experience, not lack of ability, as the primary barrier employers’ standard hiring filters keep reinforcing.
The original insight is what the design fixes rather than what it funds: keeping Universal Credit intact during the placement removes the single biggest reason past work-trial schemes lost participants partway through, financial risk. BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson called it retail “coming to the rescue,” but the more durable takeaway for other sectors is structural, pairing a real employer commitment (an interview, a possible role) with removing the income risk that keeps NEET candidates from ever reaching that interview. HR leaders already tracking the UK’s broader labor-force participation gaps and those watching this year’s shift back toward permanent UK hiring should see Opening Shift as a template for building entry-level pipelines that a tight labor market has made newly urgent.
Source: British Retail Consortium
