Could a national Graduate Employment Service be part of a new welfare settlement, asks Rayhan Haque

The graduate generation has found the welfare system wanting. Unemployment for recent graduates is at a 10-year high, with almost 20 per cent of those actively searching for a job out of work.

It is no secret that the principal means of employment support, Jobcentre Plus, is not designed to cater for graduates, with widely held negative perceptions of it as a ‘poor man’s service’ for the workshy and downtrodden.

Indeed, unless we act fast, the very notion of a popular welfare bargain risks being lost. Welfare should no longer be seen merely as a compassionate and means-tested arm of the state. It must become something for the many and not just the few, supporting those working hard and trying to do the right thing in life, as well as those in need. In short, there needs to be a fundamental change in the character of our welfare settlement.

A national Graduate Employment Service is vital in winning back support. This would be a separate and targeted graduate employment agency, where all unemployed graduates would go to for support in securing work. These centres, initially located in our major cities, will assume all current Jobcentre Plus responsibilities for unemployed university leavers, including administering benefit payments.

Moreover, as part of the new welfare bargain there will be job guarantees through an internship credit. This will ensure workless graduates have access to finance to undertake self-directed internships. The level of support will be contingent on family income, similar to arrangements under student finance.

Complementing this will be a new national graduate mentoring database. Acting as an interactive portal, this will allow in-work graduates to mentor their less fortunate peers as they seek work. The new employment service will take over the Graduate Talent Pool, a government website for advertising internships and work experience vacancies, strengthening links between employment support and employers.

But the most significant feature of this new welfare settlement will be new rights to personalised advance benefit payments. If a graduate is struggling to secure a job and is from a family with a history of work and paying taxes, they may become eligible for an upfront personal payment (a lump sum of future contributory benefit entitlements).

Graduate advisers will assess a claimant’s situation and personal ambitions. They will then decide whether an upfront payment could help them secure work or improve their employability through, for instance, intensive language courses, professional qualifications, or migrating to regions with more jobs.

Some principles from the AME-DEL model (whereby current expenditure is funded through future benefit savings) will also be adopted, if advisers judge forward payments have the potential to accrue future savings, ie through preventing long-term worklessness, developing human capital, or getting people into work and paying taxes sooner.

A winning welfare bargain requires popular support. By appealing to the instincts of Britain’s hard-pressed middle, the Graduate Employment Service has the potential to add a new and popular dimension to our welfare system and convince voters they now have a system to believe in and, importantly, fight for.

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Rayhan Haque is a policy adviser at Inclusion

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Photo: Marin Nikolov