Employers on one end. Young people on the other. Not enough in between.

That's the story told by two major reports published this year: the PEC Creative Industries Skills Audit for Music and the Milburn Review into young people and work. One looks at the problem from employers' side. The other looks at it from young people's side. 

Through hundreds of conversations with young people, practitioners, educators and employers, our Industry Connect programme sits right in the middle, and we think both reports are only telling half the story.

What they found

Milburn found that nearly one million young people are NEET (not in education, employment or training), that's one in eight 16-24 year-olds, and that one in five has a mental health condition, more than double the rate in 2012.

We've used the acronym NEET here only to stay faithful to the report. It's not a term Youth Music finds helpful.

What they get right

Both confirm what we've long known: this isn't a pipeline problem, it's a fairness problem. Class, geography and "who you know" networks still decide who gets in. Skills gaps hit mid-career staff as hard as new entrants. And mental health is a workforce issue, not a personal one.

What's still missing

Neither report gives enough credit to youth work and grassroots provision, the informal spaces where so much talent actually develops, and where Youth Music's programmes live. Neither calls for a National Music Strategy. And neither reckons with retention: 31% of young people in music are already considering leaving the sector altogether.

What we're calling for

We want investment across the whole ecosystem, not just recruitment schemes. Routes in that don't depend on money or connections. Fair standards for how young people are recruited and paid. And formal recognition of youth music as critical infrastructure for skills, work and wellbeing, with funding to match.

Industry Connect is already building this: reframing career progression as something other than a single ladder, bridging industry and education, and building the evidence base for change.

As we told the reports' authors: we're not the ecosystem waiting to be built. We already are it.