UK companies struggling to hire young people amid cost pressures, MPs told
British companies are struggling to afford to hire young people after a long period of rising costs that have hit profit margins and derailed recruitment plans, business leaders say.Rising labour costs including increases to the minimum wage and employer’s national insurance by the government have put young people at the back of the queue when employers consider recruitment, business lobby groups told MPs.They added that the Employment Rights Act threatened to make the situation worse if it discouraged employers “from taking the risk” of hiring young people with fewer skills, or without a long track record in the workplace.The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) expects the unemployment rate to rise to 5.5% this year and said young people would be “disproportionately affected”.
The Office for National Statistics said last month that the rate of unemployment was 5.2% in the three months to the end of December, with almost 1.9 million people affected.Figures for 16- to 24-year-olds showed 957,000 were out of work.Kate Shoesmith, the director of policy and insights at the BCC, said: “Businesses are trying their level best to stay afloat right now.
” She said firms wanted to hire staff but “the simple costs of that right now are really impacting them”.Chris Russell, the senior policy manager at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), said a survey of firms covering the three months to December 2025 found that 26% were employing fewer workers than the previous quarter.“That’s the worst percentage score since we started this survey more than a decade ago.”He said young people were losing out after employers switched tactics to alleviate cost pressures.“When the cost of employing people increases, it changes behaviour,” he said.
“When we ask about whether they would be willing to employ someone with less experience or a lack of qualifications, our members increasingly say, as wages have increased and employment costs have increased we are looking for people who are more qualified and don’t have gaps in their CVs, and that often means young people miss out.”The warning came as MPs on the all-party work and pensions committee carries out an inquiry into the reasons behind an increase in young people not in education, employment or training (known as Neets) to almost 1 million.Last year, the government asked the former health secretary Alan Milburn to oversee a review into unemployment and economic inactivity among young people.Milburn said young people faced an existential crisis and that there was a growing fear in society that they now had worse prospects than their predecessors in terms of employment and home ownership.“I think people feel that the social contract that we’ve had in society – that each generation would do better than the last – is now being broken,” he said last month.
Shoesmith said more than half of firms that responded to a BCC survey believed they would struggle to grow this year.It also found companies were nervous over a potential further increase in costs owing to the conflict in Iran.FSB members said in a survey that they have increasingly looked for recruits with higher skills and fewer gaps in their CV, “which works against young people”.The British Retail Consortium (BRC) said a survey of younger workers found 70% of them wanted flexibility in their working arrangements, rising to 73% if they were working part-time.The lobby group for shop owners said the response showed that opportunities for young people in retail “risked being narrowed if poor implementation of reforms aimed at strengthening worker security end up reducing the availability of flexible, entry-level roles”.
It said the recently introduced Employment Rights Act could be implemented in a way that prevents employers from offering young people the flexibility they need.“Retail plays a central role in providing these opportunities.About 780,000 retail jobs are held by 16- to 25-year-olds, accounting for 28% of the industry’s workforce and making retail the UK’s largest gateway into work, the BRC said.
‘Happy (and safe) shooting!’: chatbots helped researchers plot deadly attacks
Popular AI chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks including bombing synagogues and assassinating politicians, with one telling a user posing as a would-be school shooter: “Happy (and safe) shooting!”Tests of 10 chatbots carried out in the US and Ireland found that, on average, they enabled violence three-quarters of the time, and discouraged it in just 12% of cases. Some chatbots, however, including Anthropic’s Claude and Snapchat’s My AI, persistently refused to help would-be attackers.OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and the Chinese AI model DeepSeek provided at times detailed help in the testing carried out in December, during which researchers from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys. The research concluded that chatbots had become an “accelerant for harm”.ChatGPT offered assistance to people saying they wanted to carry out violent attacks in 61% of cases, the research found, and in one case, asked about attacks on synagogues, it gave specific advice about which shrapnel type would be most lethal
Thousands of authors publish ‘empty’ book in protest over AI using their work
Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published an “empty” book to protest against AI firms using their work without permission.About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.By 18 March ministers must deliver an economic impact assessment as well as a progress update on a consultation about the legal overhaul, against a backdrop of anger among creative professionals about how their work is being used by AI firms.The organiser of the book, Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the AI industry was “built on stolen work … taken without permission or payment”
AI firm Anthropic sues US defense department over blacklisting
Anthropic filed two lawsuits against the Department of Defense on Monday, alleging that the government’s decision to label the artificial intelligence firm a “supply chain risk” was unlawful and violated its first amendment rights. The two sides have been locked in a monthslong heated feud over the company’s attempt to implement safeguards against the military’s potential use of its AI models for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous lethal weapons.The lawsuits, which Anthropic filed in the northern district court of California and the US court of appeals for the Washington DC Circuit, come after the Pentagon formally issued the supply chain risk designation last Thursday, the first time the blacklisting tool has been used against a US company. The AI firm previously vowed to challenge the designation and its demand that any company that does business with the government cut all ties with Anthropic, a serious threat to its business model.Anthropic’s lawsuit contends that the Trump administration is punishing the company for its refusal to comply with the ideological demands of the government, in a violation of its protected speech and an attempt to punish the company for not complying
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OpenAI delays ‘adult mode’ for ChatGPT to focus on work of higher priority
OpenAI is delaying the launch of “adult mode” for ChatGPT after admitting it had more pressing priorities than introducing erotica on its signature artificial intelligence product.The startup’s chief executive, Sam Altman, had announced last year that OpenAI would allow adult content as it rolled out age checking.However, the company has now said the plan has been delayed in favour of more immediate requirements such as improving ChatGPT’s performance.“We’re pushing out the launch of adult mode so we can focus on work that is a higher priority for more users right now, including gains in intelligence, personality improvements, personalisation, and making the experience more proactive,” said OpenAI, which has more than 900 million users of ChatGPT. “We still believe in the principle of treating adults like adults, but getting the experience right will take more time
AI chatbots point vulnerable social media users to illegal online casinos, analysis shows
AI chatbots are recommending illegal online casinos to vulnerable social media users, putting them at increased risk of fraud, addiction and even suicide.Analysis of five AI products, owned by some of the world’s largest tech companies, found that all could easily be prompted to list the “best” unlicensed casinos and offer tips on how to use them.These operators, operating typically under the fig leaf of a licence from tiny jurisdictions such as the Caribbean island of Curacao, have been linked to fraud, addiction and even suicide.But tech firms appear to have few controls in place to prevent AI chatbots recommending them, drawing condemnation from the government, the UK gambling regulator, campaigners and a leading addiction expert.Some of the bots offered advice on bypassing checks designed to protect vulnerable people, while Meta AI, part of the social media group behind Facebook, described legally required measures to prevent crime and addiction as a “buzzkill” and a “real pain”
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