Tory fantasies about creating full employment were cut short yesterday by experts who found youth unemployment remains “endemic.”

In many cities across Britain a quarter of all 16 to 24-year-olds remain without work, according to the Work Foundation.

It warned that the next generation faces a bleak future if the “crisis” caused by ineffectual Con-Dem government policies continues.

Work Foundation spokeswoman Liz Crowley was clear their “top-down attempts to tackle the crisis have failed.”

She said: “The UK’s youth unemployment crisis continues to affect almost a million young people, even in the recovery.

“It is shocking that in some cities almost a third of young people are looking for work but are unable to find it.

The expert verdict comes in stark contrast to Chancellor George Osborne’s recent promise to create full employment.

In a speech on April 1, Mr Osborne said that “cutting the tax on jobs and reforming welfare” would help achieve his goal.

But the Work Foundation found a massive one in five young people across Britain is out of work.

The jobless rate reaches 25 per cent in hotspots that include Middlesbrough, Barnsley, Glasgow, Grimsby, Coventry, Bradford and Hull.

Even cities like Southampton, York and Reading, where unemployed is 13 per cent or lower, have a higher percentage of young people locked out of work than the German average of 8 per cent.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson insisted that “the number of young people in jobs is going up.”