Hunch. ONS figures out on 15 Sep show payrolled jobs down 145,000 on the year, so the job market for young people is still getting weaker.
The under-a-million market resolves on the ONS bulletin on young people not in education, employment or training published on 26 November 2026: YES if the UK count for July to September 2026 is below 1,000,000, and NO if it is 1,000,000 or more. If the release moves, the market resolves on the new date in the ONS calendar, and BBC News and The Guardian settle it if the ONS page cannot be read.
We looked for cases where the ONS count of young people out of work and study stood just under a million, between 933,000 and 999,999, before the next release. We found nine such releases from 2014 to 2026. Only once, in May 2026, did the next count go over a million. Today the count is 19,000 short of a million, and it rose by that much or more in two of the nine.