With the number of young Britons not in education, employment or training (NEET) closing in on the one million mark, McDonald’s UK has stepped into the breach with what it claims is the largest in-person work experience programme the country has ever seen.

The fast-food giant, one of the UK’s biggest employers of under-25s, today unveiled a nationwide scheme offering 2,500 paid placements in its first year, with a stated ambition to scale the commitment annually. Crucially for a generation increasingly priced out of unpaid internships, every placement will come with a wage attached.

The initiative will be delivered through McDonald’s network of franchisees, the local business owners who run the bulk of its 1,400-plus restaurants, and will be deliberately weighted towards the country’s NEET hotspots. A quarter of all placements have been earmarked for young people who are already NEET or considered at risk of becoming so.

To underpin the launch, McDonald’s has commissioned its first Youth Confidence Index, a piece of research that lays bare the gap between aspiration and opportunity confronting Britain’s under-25s. While 80 per cent of those in education, training or employment believe they have something positive to offer society, that figure plunges to 57 per cent among the NEET cohort. Two-thirds (67 per cent) of young people surveyed said they would jump at the chance to do work experience but cannot find it; almost seven in ten (69 per cent) cited a lack of opportunities locally, while 61 per cent said they simply could not afford to work for free.

It is a familiar picture to anyone who has covered the small business beat over the past decade, a labour market in which entry-level roles have thinned, hospitality and retail vacancies are no longer the rite of passage they once were, and the Bank of Mum and Dad has quietly become a prerequisite for a foot on the career ladder.

Lauren Schultz, chief executive of McDonald’s UK & Ireland, framed the move as both a commercial and civic responsibility. “At McDonald’s, we believe in the potential and ability of young people and want to help them make it,” she said. “With over 100,000 employees under 25 across the UK, we have the reach to make a real difference and are uniquely positioned to open doors at scale. Everything a young person needs to learn about the world of work, from communication to financial skills, can be mastered at McDonald’s.”

The announcement has been welcomed in Whitehall. Pat McFadden, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said the scheme demonstrated “what’s possible when Government and business help young people into work”, noting McDonald’s “strong track record” of training. The Rt Hon. Alan Milburn, who chairs the government’s Young People and Work Review, was rather less restrained, branding the NEET crisis “a national outrage with long-term consequences” and calling on other employers to follow suit.

Sector-watchers and academics were similarly supportive. Lee Elliot Major OBE, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said: “We don’t have a shortage of talent in this country, we have a shortage of opportunity. By offering paid work experience at scale, McDonald’s is showing how businesses can boost social mobility and productivity, potentially transforming the life chances of thousands of young people.”

Haroon Chowdry, chief executive of the Centre for Young Lives, said the data was unambiguous. “Young people want to work. They have hopes and ambition, but what they often lack are opportunity and support. Every young NEET is a person who has been let down by the system.”

For the participants themselves, all aged 16 or over, the offer is a five-day, hands-on placement covering the core mechanics of running a restaurant, from inventory checks and drive-thru operations to customer service, all under the supervision of seasoned crew. Tucked alongside the practical experience are sessions on interview technique and time management, the soft-skills currency that small and medium-sized employers across the country routinely complain is missing from CVs.

The programme builds on a body of work that pre-dates the current NEET emergency by some margin. McDonald’s UK & Ireland’s apprenticeship scheme has supported more than 22,000 people in earning degrees since 2006, while community initiatives such as Fun Football and Taste for Work, the latter of which has reached more than 210,000 youngsters, have long formed part of the company’s social investment. Today’s announcement also sees the chain partnering with two of the country’s more influential think tanks. The Centre for Young Lives is publishing a fresh report, Turning the Tide on Rising NEETs, setting out evidence-based policy recommendations, while the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is embarking on a two-year research programme, State of a Generation.

For a government that has staked political capital on its Youth Guarantee, a pledge to get every young person earning or learning, the McDonald’s intervention is timely. Whether other large employers can be persuaded to write similarly sizeable cheques remains the open question. As Milburn put it, this is the “kind of leadership employers need to demonstrate if we’re serious about giving every young person a fair start.”

For SME owners watching from the sidelines, the message is harder to ignore. The talent is there. So is the appetite. What has been missing, until now, is a door wide enough to let them through.

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McDonald’s bets on Britain’s youth with UK’s biggest paid work experience scheme