A leading policy expert has called for a little-known triple lock to be “removed, impacting young Britons ” arguing Britain faces a youth unemployment emergency requiring urgent action.
While the triple lock is commonly associated with the state pension, Nick Isles, the director of the Centre for Policy Research (CPS) is taking aim at “a new intergenerational settlement that stops transferring wealth from the young to the old.”
The UK’s unemployment rate has climbed to 5.1 per cent, approaching the pandemic high of 5.3 per cent and representing the worst figures outside the pandemic since 2016.
Male workers face even bleaker prospects, with their rate hitting 5.5 per cent, matching pandemic levels. Mr Isles described the scale of joblessness among young Britons as “a national emergency” and urged policymakers to treat it accordingly by scrapping the controversial pension guarantee.
The Labour Government is being urged to remove the ‘triple lock’ placed on young people
|
GETTY
The situation proves particularly dire for those aged 16 to 24. Between July and September 2025, some 238,000 young men were without work compared to 130,000 young women, while 274,000 males and 306,000 females remained economically inactive.
By late 2024, an estimated 146,000 young men outside education, employment or training were inactive due to illness, a figure that has surged since the pandemic.
Mr Isles pointed to soaring mental health diagnoses as one of three key drivers, noting that conditions among 17-year-olds jumped from one in ten in 2017 to one in four by 2022.
He described this cohort as “the anxious generation” where “too many believe they can’t rather than they can.”. The pandemic response, he argued, devastated crucial years when teenagers should have been developing social and communication skills.
Youth unemployment rate since Sept 2023 | Facts4EU
Furthermore, traditional entry points into the workforce have been vanishing at an alarming rate. More than half a million positions in retail and hospitality have disappeared since 2019 alone.
University graduates face similarly grim prospects, with starter roles in legal, financial, accounting and consultancy sectors declining, potentially due to artificial intelligence, according to Isles.
He suggested this marks “the end of the graduate premium,” with too many degrees failing to deliver the economic benefits promised by higher education institutions.
Payrolled employment dropped by nearly 90,000 in the most recent quarter, the steepest decline since Covid struck.
Housing compounds these difficulties, with unaffordable rents and unreachable mortgages forcing young adults to remain in their childhood bedrooms.
Mr Isles warned this extended adolescence creates friction between generations and leaves young people feeling “trapped” and “very angry about their fate.”
The policy expert asserted this “triple lock” on younger Britons is a barrier for the youth in generating wealth which the Government should “remove”.
Previous conversations surrounding intergenerational fairness have also tackled the actual state pension triple lock, which is the mechanism used to determine annual payment rate hikes.
What has the impact of the state pension triple lock been on the public’s finances | OBR
The Office for Budget Responsibility has labelled the triple lock a “large financial risk” to the nation’s finances, with payments rising by the highest of either inflation, average wage growth, or 2.5 per cent.
As it stands, the pension guarantee is estimated to cost taxpayers £15.5billion annually, roughly three times the £5 billion originally anticipated when the coalition government introduced it over a decade ago.
State pension expenditure currently accounts for approximately five per cent of GDP, up dramatically from just two per cent in the 1950s. The OBR projects this will rise to 7.5 per cent of total economic output within half a century.
The watchdog’s 2025 report on financial risks and sustainability warned that Britain’s public finances occupy a “relatively vulnerable position” after successive governments abandoned spending consolidation plans, substantially eroding the country’s ability to withstand future economic shocks.
