Badenoch youth jobs pledge promises cheaper hiring for under-25s

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch will use her keynote speech at the party's conference in Birmingham on Wednesday to promise cheaper hiring for young workers, according to advance reports from The Times. The Badenoch youth jobs pledge would cut employers' national insurance for staff aged 21 to 24 from 15 per cent to 7.5 per cent. The party says the move would save companies an average of £1,545 for every young worker they employ, with bigger savings for those on higher wages.

What the pledge would cost and create

The Tories say the Badenoch youth jobs pledge would cost £2.3 billion a year and insist it is fully funded. Their estimate is that cheaper hiring would create 33,600 jobs by the end of the decade. Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith argues that Labour's tax changes, employment rules and minimum wage rises have made hiring young workers far more expensive. Business leaders broadly agree with the diagnosis: John Foster of the CBI said companies want to give young people a first step on the jobs ladder, but right now it is simply too expensive to hire.

Labour raised employers' national insurance at its first budget, a move the Tories describe as a £25 billion raid on business. Under the Badenoch youth jobs pledge, young people earning more than £50,270 would still face the standard rate of national insurance; the cut is aimed at those starting out on the career ladder. The announcement is the latest in a string of conference pledges from the Tories, who are gathering in Birmingham this week for Badenoch's second conference speech as party leader.

The youth jobs crisis behind the promise

The Badenoch youth jobs pledge lands against a bleak backdrop for young jobseekers. Youth unemployment has climbed to its highest level since 2014, and more than one million young people are not earning or learning, The Sun reports. The Tories say there are 60,000 more young people classed as NEETs, meaning not in education, employment or training, than when Labour came to power. Badenoch told the BBC that a delayed first job leaves a lasting mark: the party says a spell out of work in the early twenties reduces lifetime earnings by £52,000 on average, rising to £293,000 for those out of work or education between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.

The wider economy offers the Badenoch youth jobs pledge no easy backdrop. S&P Global's PMI survey found that British employers cut staffing for twenty-four months in a row, the longest jobs downturn since the early 2000s, with the services slowdown easing only slightly. The survey put youth unemployment at 16.4 per cent, and roughly 250,000 payroll jobs have disappeared since early 2024, even as the economy grew about 2.5 per cent, according to the Credit Protection Association's analysis of the data.

The pushback

Labour dismissed the Badenoch youth jobs pledge as fantasy economics. A party spokesman said Badenoch talks about being on the side of young people while her party allowed a generation to be locked out of work or training. The bigger question is funding: The Times reports the tax cuts would be paid for with more than £30 billion in welfare cuts, which would also go toward Britain's £3 trillion national debt under what Badenoch calls the Conservative savings plan. Her speech will also promise a cut to the 40 per cent inheritance tax.

For young workers, the practical question is whether cheaper payroll costs turn into real job offers. Employers would pocket the saving directly, so much depends on whether companies use it to open junior roles or simply trim wage bills. The jobs pledge follows a separate conference announcement on welfare: the Tories want young claimants without six months of continuous work to move onto a new get-to-work allowance with daily conditions instead of universal credit. The Milburn review on youth inactivity, commissioned to advise on the growing number of young people out of work, is expected to land soon with recommendations that reportedly include mandatory work experience placements starting in primary school, plus earlier support for young people with anxiety, depression and ADHD. Wednesday's speech will show how seriously the Tories take the Badenoch youth jobs pledge to make hiring young workers cheaper.