Britain Still Needs Worker Bees

11,305 placements. Not 11,305 jobs.

The programme is called Opening Shift.

It has been developed by the British Retail Consortium with the Department for Work and Pensions and participating retailers. It targets 18-to-24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training.

Participants spend between two and four weeks inside a retailer, typically for between 16 and 35 hours a week. They continue receiving Universal Credit, receive workplace support and are guaranteed an interview after completing the placement.

And then comes the important wording.

“If one is available.”

That is the qualification attached to the possibility of moving into a role.

That does not make Opening Shift worthless.

For somebody who has never worked, has spent months outside employment or has lost confidence, getting up, travelling to a workplace, interacting with colleagues and customers and being given some responsibility could be enormously useful.

Some will get jobs.

Some may build careers.

But we should call the thing what it is.

11,305 placements are not 11,305 employment contracts.

The wider retail ambition is to support 100,000 young people into retail employment by 2029.

That is an ambition worth watching.

But it also means the number that really matters will not be the number of placements announced.

It will be what happens afterwards.

Meet the retailers

The published participant lists contain more than 40 retailers. The British Retail Consortium-linked list used for this analysis contains 42 names, although different published versions of the rollout have not been completely identical.

Look at the list again.

It tells us something about Britain.

We are not talking about 42 engineering companies.

We are not announcing a national programme involving 42 manufacturers desperately searching for young apprentices.

This is overwhelmingly retail, supermarkets, consumer businesses, cafés, distribution and the infrastructure that surrounds them.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with working in those industries.

The person stacking the shelf matters. The person making the coffee matters. The person picking the order matters. The person unloading the delivery matters.

COVID should have settled that argument permanently.

My question is different.

Why does an economy that continually tells us it has a skills shortage keep becoming so extraordinarily good at building pipelines into relatively low-skilled work?

The easy argument does not survive the evidence

I could write the simple version of this article.

Forty-two greedy corporations. Minimum wage. Free labour. Government subsidy. Young people exploited.

Except the evidence does not support that story.

Some participating employers pay noticeably above the statutory minimum.

Aldi in particular complicates any blanket claim about supermarket pay. John Lewis complicates the ownership argument too because the Partnership remains employee-owned rather than being structured around external shareholders.

Some retailers provide genuine management pathways, training and apprenticeships.

The 42 are not one thing.

And that matters.

Because if the evidence contradicts my cynicism, I have to include it.

Then look at the hours

Hourly pay is only one part of low-paid work.

Current and recent vacancies among participating retailers include small guaranteed-hours contracts.

Iceland has also advertised online-picking work requiring flexibility for extremely early starts.

None of this automatically means somebody is being exploited.

Some people want six hours. Some people want weekend work. Some people need employment around childcare, education or another job.

But this is why the headline hourly rate can mislead.

£12.71 an hour does not tell you whether somebody has enough work to live on.

Retail already contains more than one million low-paid jobs

Here the national numbers become difficult to ignore.

Living Wage Foundation analysis of official earnings data estimated that in 2025 approximately 1.07 million wholesale and retail jobs paid below the real Living Wage.

That represented around 29% of jobs in the sector.

Among sales occupations, approximately 50.9% were below the real Living Wage.

Across the economy, around 57% of jobs held by 18-to-21-year-olds were below it.

Part-time jobs were substantially more likely to fall below the real Living Wage than full-time jobs.

So when government builds a pipeline specifically connecting unemployed young people with retail, it is reasonable to examine the type of labour market sitting at the other end.

That does not prove Opening Shift is exploitative.

It does mean we should ask what kind of employment the programme eventually produces.

Where did the shopkeeper go?

This also made me think about growing up.

When I was young, businesses often felt more like businesses owned by people.

The shopkeeper.

The family business.

The person whose name was above the door.

Obviously Britain had enormous chains and multinational companies then too. I am not pretending the high street of 1990 was some independent-retail paradise.

But ownership has become increasingly distant.

Boots currently sits inside a private-equity ownership structure following Sycamore Partners’ acquisition of Walgreens Boots Alliance. In October 2026, Wittington Investments agreed to acquire Boots, with completion still pending.

Asda is majority controlled by TDR Capital.

Pret is majority owned by JAB.

Primark has historically sat within Associated British Foods, with a demerger process now changing that corporate structure.

At the other end sits John Lewis Partnership, still owned for the benefit of its Partners rather than conventional external shareholders.

Different models. Different incentives. Different histories.

But stand on the shop floor and something is obvious.

The shopkeeper has not necessarily disappeared.

Ownership has moved further away from the shop.

Recruit here. Cut there.

This is where the timing of Opening Shift becomes particularly interesting.

Morrisons appears among the participating retailers while recent reporting has described further head-office roles at risk after thousands of jobs disappeared across the wider business during the preceding period.

Dunelm announced a new strategy aimed at removing approximately £100 million of its least productive costs over three years and reinvesting across the business while pursuing expansion and new stores.

That is not necessarily hypocrisy.

A company can reduce one type of employment while creating another.

It can automate one process, remove management layers, open another store, restructure distribution and hire shop-floor workers at the same time.

That is modern employment.

CUT → AUTOMATE → RESTRUCTURE → EXPAND → RECRUIT → REPEAT

But it demonstrates why counting placements tells us very little about net job creation.

Follow the young person

Imagine being 20.

You are unemployed.

You are receiving Universal Credit.

The Jobcentre identifies you for Opening Shift.

You enter a retailer.

You spend two to four weeks there.

The state continues supporting you while you gain workplace experience.

You complete the placement.

You receive an interview.

If there is a suitable vacancy, perhaps you get it.

Maybe it is 16 hours.

Maybe 25.

Maybe full-time.

Maybe you progress.

That could be a perfectly reasonable labour-market intervention.

But zoom out.

The state is helping prepare, support and direct labour towards private employers.

Again, that is not inherently sinister.

Government should help people into work.

The question is what kind of work it helps reproduce.

Government is not only offering work experience

It is important not to pretend Opening Shift represents the whole youth-employment strategy.

Other government programmes have stronger employment conditions.

The Youth Jobs Grant, for example, requires qualifying employment to be genuine paid work of at least 25 hours per week and to last for at least four months.

There is also a Jobs Guarantee intended to provide eligible long-term unemployed young people with six months of paid employment.

Apprenticeship training costs and employer incentives are also being expanded.

That distinction is useful.

One scheme primarily guarantees exposure and an interview.

The other requires an actual job.

We should not measure them as though they achieve the same thing.

COVID accidentally proved it

For a few strange months in 2020, Britain stopped pretending otherwise.

Offices emptied.

Professionals worked from bedrooms.

Roads emptied.

Shops closed.

And suddenly we developed a new phrase.

KEY WORKERS.

Who were they?

For a moment, economic status and social usefulness became separated.

Somebody could have a prestigious, well-paid job and remain at home while somebody earning considerably less had to leave the house because society literally could not function without them.

We applauded some of them.

We put rainbows in windows.

We called them heroes.

Then the emergency ended.

And many of the heroes went back to being described as low-skilled workers.

COVID answered one question.

We need them.

The remaining argument is how much money, security, dignity and power we think their work deserves.

And now we need another generation

This is where my cynicism about Opening Shift really begins.

At the latest official count, approximately 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were not in education, employment or training.

That is around 13% of the entire age group.

Among 18-to-24-year-olds specifically, the figure was approximately 894,000 — 15.2%.

ONS warns against over-interpreting short-term movements in the figures, but the scale itself is impossible to dismiss.

I look at some young people and think: you are not ready

This is the part where I know I risk sounding old.

I look at some youngsters today and they seem different.

Some look frail.

Some look lost.

Some seem extraordinarily uncomfortable dealing with other people.

Some appear to have reached adulthood without acquiring the social confidence I would expect an adult to have.

That is my observation.

It is not scientific evidence.

And every generation eventually looks at the generation behind it and announces that something has gone terribly wrong.

People said it about us.

So I have to challenge my own reaction.

Maybe the youngsters are not simply weaker.

Maybe childhood changed.

Then there was Chucky

I watched Child’s Play when I was about seven.

That was a mistake.

Chucky absolutely terrified me.

I ended up sleeping on my mum’s bed for about two weeks.

There was no parental-control algorithm protecting me from Chucky.

Perhaps there should have been.

But that memory captures something about childhood then.

The boundaries were messy.

Children sometimes encountered things that were not made for them.

Then there was Dolores Claiborne.

One of my favourite films.

Think about what that story contains.

That’s a lot for a child to absorb.

I am not claiming Dolores Claiborne turned me into some sophisticated child philosopher.

It didn’t.

The point is that the boundary between the child’s world and the adult world felt porous.

You gradually encountered adulthood before somebody officially declared you an adult.

You observed it.

You listened to it.

You misunderstood bits of it.

And sometimes, years later, something an adult said when you were nine suddenly made sense.

Today’s children see more — and perhaps experience less

Here is the paradox.

A child today can see infinitely more of the adult world than I could.

Everything.

Sometimes before breakfast.

So it would be ridiculous to say today’s children are sheltered from the adult world.

They can be drowning in it.

But there is a distinction.

Access to adult information is not the same thing as participation in adult social life.

I heard adults talking to each other.

A teenager today can spend hours hearing an influencer talking at them.

I watched people negotiate relationships in front of me.

They can watch somebody explain relationships in a 45-second video selected by an algorithm.

I was bored sometimes.

They can carry a machine specifically engineered to eliminate boredom.

And boredom does things.

It makes you go somewhere.

Talk to somebody.

Watch somebody.

Annoy somebody.

Try something.

Get told to piss off.

Learn.

But don’t blame everything on the phone

This is where the evidence requires more care than the culture war usually allows.

The government’s Young People and Work review describes a generation that is different.

Not necessarily worse.

Not necessarily lazier.

Not less intelligent.

Different.

The proportion of children and young people in England recorded with a mental disorder rose substantially between 2017 and 2023.

In polling used by the review, a majority of 16-to-24-year-olds said social media does more harm than good.

There are legitimate concerns about sleep, attention, comparison, anxiety, compulsive use and social development.

But separate government evidence reviews also warn that proving direct causation between smartphones, social media and worsening mental health remains difficult.

Because everything else changed too.

Housing changed.

Schools changed.

Family life changed.

The labour market changed.

COVID happened.

Economic insecurity changed.

Many of the spaces in which young people once mixed with other generations changed, diminished or moved online.

Technology changed at the same time.

So I do not want to write:

Phone = broken generation.

That is too easy.

I want to ask something harder.

What happens when you change almost the entire environment in which a generation learns to become adult — and then act surprised when adulthood looks different?

Then look at apprenticeships

Britain simultaneously tells us it has a skills problem.

We need electricians.

Engineers.

Construction workers.

Technicians.

Energy workers.

Healthcare workers.

People capable of maintaining infrastructure.

People who can actually make and repair things.

Yet the apprenticeship system has changed substantially from the popular image of a teenager leaving school to learn a trade.

Provisional figures for England covering August 2025 to April 2026 recorded 308,770 apprenticeship starts.

Break them down by age.

Just 20.6% of starts were under 19.

More than half — 52.4% — were aged 25 or older.

Under-19 starts were down year-on-year while starts among people aged 25 and over increased strongly.

That does not mean apprenticeships for older adults are bad.

They aren’t.

Retraining matters. Higher apprenticeships matter. Adults changing careers matter.

But it does mean the word apprenticeship no longer necessarily means what many people imagine it means.

And historically, under-19 starts have fallen substantially from where they stood a decade earlier.

So Britain manages to hold two thoughts at the same time.

Then we announce thousands of placements at supermarkets, shops and consumer businesses.

Forgive me for asking whether we are solving the correct problem.

Follow the money as well as the worker

Government is also expanding financial support designed to make employing and training young people more attractive.

Eligible employers can receive youth-employment incentives.

Apprenticeship training and assessment can be heavily or fully funded within the relevant rules.

Employers can potentially qualify for multiple forms of support where the conditions of each scheme are satisfied.

Again: this is not automatically bad.

Governments subsidise things because they want more of them.

But that produces another question.

What exactly are we subsidising Britain to become?

If government pours sustained effort into technical colleges, manufacturing apprenticeships, infrastructure, engineering and construction, it helps create one kind of labour supply.

If government becomes exceptionally efficient at moving young people rapidly into flexible service employment, it supports another.

Britain has spent decades talking about becoming a high-skill, high-wage economy.

Look around.

What did we actually build?

A job still matters

I do not want this argument to become contempt for ordinary work.

A retail job can transform somebody’s life.

Work can give somebody structure.

Money.

Confidence.

Friends.

Responsibility.

Experience.

A reference.

A reason to get out of bed.

Somebody who begins stacking shelves at 19 may eventually run a store, a region or an entire business.

People do.

But an economy cannot promote everybody to manager.

Someone remains on the shop floor.

Someone works the till.

Someone picks the order.

Someone cleans.

Someone delivers.

That is why endless stories about individual progression can distract from the more important structural question.

The exceptional person escaping the bottom does not tell us whether the bottom itself is acceptable.

The worker bee never disappeared

Maybe this is the part we do not like admitting.

We cannot all work from home.

We cannot all become software engineers.

We cannot all become managers.

We cannot all become entrepreneurs.

We definitely cannot all sell each other courses about becoming entrepreneurs.

Somebody has to open the coffee shop at six in the morning.

Somebody has to unload the supermarket delivery.

Somebody has to clean the office.

Somebody has to pick the parcel.

Somebody has to care for your mum when she can no longer care for herself.

Somebody has to empty the bins.

Somebody has to stand behind the counter.

The worker bee is not an accidental failure of the economy. The worker bee is necessary to it.

The political question is whether that person receives enough money, security, respect and power to build a decent life.

And look at the scale

Tesco alone has been reported as offering around 5,000 Opening Shift placements.

If measured on the same pledged-placement basis as the 11,305 aggregate, that would represent roughly 44% of the entire announced total.

That makes Tesco particularly important when the programme is eventually evaluated.

How many people started?

How many completed?

How many interviewed?

How many were offered employment?

How many hours?

What pay?

How many were still there a year later?

Those numbers will tell us considerably more than the launch headline.