The problem is real, and it's urgent

The world of work is changing faster than young people are being prepared for it — and the UK is at the front of that curve.

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that 39% of workers' core skills will need to change by 2030. The OECD's Employment Outlook 2025 finds that 27% of jobs are now at high risk of automation, with one in three new vacancies showing high AI exposure.

In the UK specifically, McKinsey's 2025 analysis found that entry-level job postings — apprenticeships, internships, junior roles — have fallen by almost a third since ChatGPT launched in late 2022. Youth unemployment for 16–24-year-olds has risen from 10.9% to 14.3% over the same period

The domestic picture is equally stark. By the end of 2025, nearly one million young people aged 16–24 in the UK were not in education, employment or training — 957,000 according to ONS figures. Experts warn this figure will reach one million without intervention. Alan Milburn, commissioned by government to lead an independent review into young people and work, has described the education system as "brilliant at sorting young people by academic ability and poor at equipping them for adult life." He has said that time and again, employers report that young people are simply not work ready.

But demand is not collapsing uniformly. The skills that are growing — systems-level problem solving, hands-on technical work, adaptive thinking, creative problem solving — map directly onto what the Engineering Habits of Mind framework was designed to develop.

And there is a third layer to the problem. Research from the ASPIRES 2 study at UCL shows that young people — particularly girls and those from underrepresented backgrounds — have typically decided whether STEM is "for people like me" by age 14. Many young people — particularly Black students — are genuinely interested in science, but don't see scientific careers as "for me."

That's not an awareness problem. It's an identity problem. RC Vision exists to close that gap through experience, not information.

The young people most likely to opt out of STEM early are the same young people most exposed to labour market turbulence when they enter work. Inaction is not neutral. RC Vision works at precisely the moments when that decision is still open.