Household worklessness, educational capital and NEET status among young adults in the UK

Abstract This article examines how household worklessness and educational capital are jointly associated with being not in education, employment or training (NEET) among young adults in the United Kingdom. Existing research often treats educational trajectories and household disadvantage as separate explanatory domains, obscuring how they coexist during the transition to adulthood. Using UK Labour Force Survey household microdata for October–December 2025, the study analyses 5251 people aged 18–24; household‐file‐weighted linked ordinal and logistic regression models are estimated on 5118 complete cases. To prevent definitional overlap between predictor and outcome, household worklessness is constructed from the employment status of other adults, excluding the focal respondent. Compared with working household contexts, workless contexts were associated with substantially higher adjusted odds of NEET (OR = 3.079, 95% CI [2.238, 4.235]). Higher qualifications and recent learning were associated with lower NEET odds, although recent learning did not materially attenuate the household gradient. A respondent‐included sensitivity analysis produced quasi‐complete separation, confirming the distortion created when the young person's own employment status contributes to both the household measure and the NEET outcome. The findings identify household employment context and educational credentials as distinct, concurrent dimensions of participation inequality. They support a relational interpretation of NEET while remaining cross‐sectional associations rather than evidence of causal transmission.