The Bedroom Generation Is Waiting to Book the Room

The most honest economic indicator in Britain right now isn't the FTSE or the bond market. It's the number of duvets that haven't been folded since March.Somewhere in a semi-detached in Stoke, a nineteen-year-old is finishing his fourth consecutive episode of a YouTube essay about a video game he doesn't play, made by a man he doesn't trust, while his mum knocks on the door to ask if he's applied for that apprenticeship. He has not applied for that apprenticeship. He has, however, developed strong opinions about lo-fi production techniques and the cinematography of mid-2000s anime. This counts as something. It just doesn't count as employment.The Office for National Statistics calls him a NEET — Not in Education, Employment, or Training — and according to its November 2024 bulletin, 13.2% of 16-to-24-year-olds in the UK share his postal code of the soul. That's up from 12.2% in the spring, which doesn't sound like much until you remember that statistics are made of people, and people…