M&S creates 1,000 paid traineeships for young people with no degree
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — Marks & Spencer is offering 1,000 six-month paid training places to young people aged 18 to 24 — no degree required — as United Kingdom youth unemployment hits its worst level in over 12 years with over a million young people not in education, employment, or training.
M&S bets retail can absorb the NEET crisis
“A Saturday job can change a young person’s life. I know, because it transformed mine,” said Stuart Machin, Chief Executive of M&S.
According to Retail Gazette, the program, called “Not Just Any Career,” opens applications July 27 and will run rolling placements across M&S stores in the UK and Ireland over 18 months, targeting young people who have not pursued university and giving them a direct path to store management training upon completion.
More than 1 million 16-to-24-year-olds in the UK are classified as NEET — roughly 1 in 8 — and the rate is forecast to reach 1 in 6 by 2030, which the Milburn review on youth employment described as among Europe’s worst.
Employer-led program targets entry-level talent gap
“We want more young people to see retail not just as a first job, but as a career with real opportunity, real responsibility and real progression,” said Thinus Keeve, Retail Director at M&S, weeks after Alan Milburn’s Young People and Work review warned that entry-level opportunities are “not growing, they’re shrinking.”
Six in 10 young people currently classified as NEET have never held a job, Milburn’s review found.
Milburn called M&S’s program “the type of employer leadership my review calls for.”
The scheme also runs alongside M&S’s 20-year Marks & Start partnership with The King’s Trust, which has already supported more than 14,000 people.
M&S is pairing the traineeship with an AI-powered digital career platform launching in early 2027 — a signal that the scheme is designed not just to fill today’s entry-level vacancies, but to future-proof the workers who fill them.
For BPO providers, the M&S model points to a talent infrastructure approach with direct offshore parallels. The Philippines, India, and other outsourcing markets face the same entry-level skills gap as AI upgrades role requirements faster than vocational training can respond.
Providers who build structured traineeships internally — giving young people without degrees a clear competency pathway into professional roles — will not need to compete for the thin pool of already-trained talent.
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