In the last two months, peers have spent 25 hours debating House of Lords reform. Today they will spend two and half hours debating youth unemployment, and only one backbench Conservative is taking part. That doesn’t say much about the government’s priorities, particularly in tackling what Nick Clegg has called ‘a ticking time-bomb for the economy and our society’.
The situation is dire. There are the 954,000 under-24-year-olds not in employment, education or training. Most concerning of all are the 167,000 under-24s who have been unemployed claimants for more than six months, a number which has more than doubled since last April; and the 61,000 who have been claiming for more than 12 months, a number which has more than trebled in the last year.
There are three priorities for action.
First, young people need more job opportunities to be available, as soon as possible.
Second, young people need better preparation and motivation for work. There needs to be new vision for what Acevo, the voluntary sector organisation, calls the ‘forgotten half of young people who are not destined for university or a high quality apprenticeship post-16’.
Third, unemployed young people need the support of a far more active welfare state to help them get into work and stay there.
More jobs and training is the most urgent requirement. Stronger incentives are needed for employers to recruit unemployed young people. The government, after first scrapping Labour’s ‘Future Jobs Fund’, has now recognised the need to do more. Hence the new Youth Contract, offering 160,000 wage subsidies of just over £2,000 for each new private and voluntary sector job given to a long-term unemployed young person, over this year and the next two.
The Youth Contract represents 53,000 work opportunities over the coming year, which is not much in the face of the 167,000 who have been unemployed claimants for more than six months – even if all such opportunities all created.
However, the big numbers in the Youth Contract are for work experience placements, with 100,000 promised this year. I strongly support work experience, provided young people are treated properly. But even if these places materialise, they are of short duration – as little as two or three weeks – and no substitute for real jobs paying real wages.
We need to go further than the Youth Contract. Hence Labour’s proposed Real Jobs Guarantee for under-25s who are long-term unemployed. For those out of work for more than a year there would be six months’ paid employment, with the state providing wage subsidy for 25 hours of work and the employer covering the cost of 10 hours of training each week.
If the Youth Contract doesn’t rapidly reduce the number of long-term young unemployed, the government should adopt our Real Jobs Guarantee, and the bankers’ bonus tax which makes it possible. Or Nick Clegg’s ‘ticking time bomb’ will explode, long before the Lords is reformed.
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Andrew Adonis is a member of the House of Lords and chair of Progress
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This article was first published at the Labour Lords blog
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Andrew -concentrate on this – a really valid resp0nse and forget education
Any future Labour government will have competing priorities, but this has to be at least in Labour’s top three priorities for when Labour returns to government. I say this as someone with bitter experience of finding myself arriving in the jobs market in the early 80s, one of ‘Thatcher’s children’. CVs that appear to allude to periods of under employment, however productively spent, might as well say “I spent two years in HMP Pentonville”. Ironically, not being able to land a job ultimately saw me go to University – it was cheaper for the state to send me to University (as a mature student and however under prepared and unqualified) than keep me on supplementary benefit, as it was then. There was also the flexibility of being a full time HE student that meant I could work and for a good slice of my studies, I did, resulting in earnings exceeding my personal tax allowance so I paid Income Tax. However, despite this period of respite from unemployment, on leaving university I found few options of getting on the employment treadmill. It took me 8 years before I landed a job that required a degree as part of the skills and experience set I had built up. I did other work in that interregnum, but all of it low skilled, manual or casual. The point being that unemployment in your earliest adult years acts as a real drag on your prospects later on in life even when one eventually lands a job. One is always behind the curve, their are always younger people competing with you. Fortunately, I remained broadly positive (many of my peers did not) got on my bike, kept myself busy and acquired new skills and experiences. I offered my services to numerous potential employers, all remained steadfastly oblivious. Preferring the more obvious candidates whose back story was more prosaic, more familiar to their own histories and back stories. Many argue that getting out there and doing any job is better than none, but although that might be self evident and certainly advice I have followed, it certainly does not aid you in getting higher skilled or more appropriate employment. Therefore Labour will need to create apprenticeships for older people – they don’t exist at present. The concept of the apprenticeship will also need to change to accommodate more information technology skills, communication and customer management. Expensive, but the alternative is a generation thrown on the scrap heap a legacy for the current PM “Cameron’s Children’
This is a very important issue. Not all young people want to go to university. My daughter has 3 A levels, and the offer of a place, but she is reluctant to take on the higher student fees debt. She has just applied for the National Apprenticeship Scheme, brought in under Labour in 2009. This seems to be an excellent scheme, which should be encouraged and have more money put into it. Instead of running up a debt which will be taken out of future earnings, young people who do not have academic ambitions can start a job and be assured of relevant training. She signed up on Thursday and so far two local employers have contacted her for an interview. I really do hope that when Labour returns to government there will be more money and effort put into apprenticeships, alongside policies for growth in order to create more jobs for apprentices to move into – sadly lacking in the current administration!