An economic draft? Drive to get young Neets in the military divides opinion

Young people looking for employment should “really seriously take a look at the armed forces”, according to the veterans minister, Louise Sandher-Jones, and with more than 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neets), everyone that age is aware of how bleak the job market is at present. But not all agree about whether the military is the answer.

Alexandra Williams is from rural Lincolnshire and studied law at a university in Manchester. She went in with the intention of becoming a lawyer, but early on was led to believe that would be impossible. “One of my lecturers was like: you’ve got no contacts, you’re not going to get anywhere,” she says.

Looking for opportunities, she joined the local University Officer Training Corps, an army reserve unit that exclusively recruits university students. There she was given extra responsibilities alongside regular combat training such as running their social media accounts, helping with recruitment and doing press work with Soldier Magazine.

“Most people leave uni and they’re struggling to get jobs,” says Williams. Now, at 24, she is starting a career in PR and says she wouldn’t have succeeded without her experience in the army. She keeps up her connection with the military as a combat medic in the army reserves.

For Williams, the options were always open to maintain a civilian life while developing her interest in the armed forces. But various peace organisations have expressed concern that the military is preying upon young people with fewer and fewer options available to them.

Emma Sangster is a coordinator at Forces Watch, an organisation that campaigns against militarism in civil society. It is one of 13 peace groups that recently petitioned ministers to rule out conscription, a threat that for the first time in generations seems “very real”.

Sangster spoke about a growing sense of an economic draft in the UK or “conscription by poverty”. “I suppose it feels inevitable that the plight of young people would be seen as an opportunity for the military,” says Sangster.

She also contextualised Sandher-Jones’s comments to the Telegraph in terms of a broader push by the Labour government to recruit: last year the Ministry of Defence pledged £70m to expand the Cadet Force by 30%; this February it announced it would place military personnel in jobcentres to recruit for the army, aiming for tens of thousands of new recruits.

But Jim Wyke from the Child Rights International Network said the idea that army recruitment – approximately 10,000 under-25s every year – could make a dent to youth Neet figures was “ludicrous”.

In fact, he says, in the under-18 category, recruitment to the army is a net generator of Neets, because the drop-out rate is so high – about 30% in 2022-23 – at the Army Foundation College in Harrogate, where junior soldiers train, compared with 6-15% for under-18s in different types of civilian further education.

“The data shows that [recruiting more under-18s] is not the solution. It won’t make a damn bit of difference anyway, and if they did it, it would still lead to worse outcomes for under 18-year-olds compared with civilian alternative routes,” said Wyke.

Will O’Donnell, a final year SOAS student studying politics and international relations, agrees. In light of how “cooked” his generation is, with fewer than 10,000 graduate jobs available for close to a million university leavers, he says army recruitment “doesn’t plug the gap at all”.

“Seeing our friends in the years above struggle in the job market, there is a real sense of doom and gloom about where our career prospects lie. This is a much bigger problem than simply telling people to join the military”.