29/05/2026
🚨 A 23-year-old has shared the "horrible" reality of being unable to find permanent work - despite firing off 20 job applications a day.
Chelsea Duke is one of the estimated 1.01 million young people aged 16 to 24 in England who are not in education, employment or training - widely known as NEETS, and this number is rising. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a record number of these young adults are now classified as "economically inactive."
Instant job rejections, no money to learn how to drive and having to rely on her partner to cover all her costs - Chelsea Duke's situation is worryingly common across the UK. The young woman tells the Mirror that unstable housing has been a huge factor in her struggle to secure long-term employment.
"I've been trying to get a job since last year in August so it's almost been a year now," Chelsea, who has a diploma in animal management and left education when she was nearly 19 years old, says.
She explains she has had a couple of short-term jobs since, then, including as a Sainsbury's overnight Christmas temp, but despite submitting 20 applications a day she has had no joy in finding permanent employment.
"I left education during Covid," Chelsea says. "I lived with my mum for a bit, then I got a job as a dog grooming assistant and I moved out." She was then forced to move out of her new property through no fault of her own, and found herself in a hellish cycle.
"I've been in and out of jobs, but not because I wanted to be, because I had to move so much," she explains. She says the unstable housing situation is "definitely" being part of the problem, "because I would have been able to get a more consistent job if I knew if I had to move home or not".
The relentless rejection she faces on the job hunt is "horrible" - and it's made worse by AI been used to screen potential candidates. "I'll apply for 20 jobs in a day and then half of them I'll get an email back within the next minute saying, 'You haven't been selected for the next step'. I just know that a human didn't read that. I know a person didn't read the CV, so they didn't even give me a chance."
Chelsea is trained to work on farms, in pet shops, or animal shelters. Another stumbling block she comes across is that a full driving license is a requirement for these positions when they do come up and she can't afford driving lessons, creating a painful catch-22.
"I'm stuck in like a loop where it's like 'oh if I get this job I'll have more money, but I can't drive. Let me get a smaller job, you know, just a retail job and then I can make the money and I can learn to drive 'Oh, they're not hiring me.' I don't know why."
Chelsea was relying on Universal Credit as a "top up" to the freelance income she made from working as an artist, but when she moved in with her boyfriend Solomon, this was suddenly cut off.
Her partner works as an underwriter for a bank, and because of the amount he earns, she no longer qualified for UC. This adds pressure to their dynamic, and fills Chelsea with a lot of guilt. "He barely makes above minimum wage, he just has a lot of hours," the 23-year-old says.
"I feel really guilty because he's paying all the bills" Chelsea tells us, adding it would be different "if he earned enough to support both of us comfortably and not stress himself out."
