‘I struck a pot of gold.’ That’s how one Carmarthenshire teenager described joining the Welsh government’s Jobs Growth Wales scheme.
Jobs Growth Wales is one of the Labour Welsh government’s key Programme for Government commitments, seeking to respond to the worrying level of youth unemployment facing us as a result of continued difficult economic conditions being felt by the UK. It is also one of the initiatives of which Labour members of the National Assembly for Wales are most proud.
Introduced in April of last year, the £75m programme aims to create 12,000 jobs for 16-to-24-year-olds across Wales over three years, although early figures suggest that the scheme is already outperforming and exceeding all targets and expectations.
Through Jobs Growth Wales, the Welsh government covers the national minimum wage of participants, giving them six months of work experience and the company a chance to expand and make the jobs permanent. Early indicators show that employers are doing their best to keep their new staff, and a number of them are creating new apprenticeship opportunities which is a successful outcome for both young people and business.
The programme is aimed at young people who are job-ready but who have had difficulty securing employment.
There are four separate, but interlinked, strands of the programme.
• The private sector strand is the largest of the programme and is offering at least 2,500 job opportunities for young people per year. A key criterion for businesses to participate is their ability to create additional posts outside of their current staffing.
• The third sector strand will provide around 1,000 job opportunities a year in the third sector for young people. As an acknowledgement of the third sector’s expertise, it is through this strand that the Labour Welsh government provides opportunities for young people who may require a more supported employment environment as they enter the labour market for the first time.
• The graduate strand is working to provide dedicated job opportunities for Welsh graduates, responding to concerns about the level of graduates struggling to secure employment.
• The self-employment strand is helping young people to start their own businesses, working within existing packages of support available through the Welsh government’s business start-up programmes
The Labour Welsh government believes in its young people, and does not underestimate how important schemes like Jobs Growth Wales are in terms of giving young people the kind of experience that employers want. Crucially, it also gives young people hope and confidence and sends out a powerful message that the Welsh government will not turn its back on its young people in harsh economic times.
Contrast this with the scrapping of the Future Jobs Fund by David Cameron in Westminster. The prime minister scrapped the successful scheme which sought to get young people in to work, turning his back on a generation and sitting back while youth unemployment spiralled out of control until a million young people found themselves without a job.
The UK government’s own impact analysis showed that the Future Jobs Fund had been a success, producing a net gain for the British economy, and that former jobseekers who took part in the scheme were 16 per cent less likely to be in receipt of welfare support two years later, and were 27 per cent more likely to be in unsubsidised employment than if they had not participated. Both young people and the British economy paid the price for Cameron’s catastrophic political point-making.
Jobs Growth Wales is being delivered in every local authority in Wales, providing work opportunities for young men and women in both urban and rural communities. Businesses of all sizes and in all sectors are being encouraged to take part in the scheme.
This innovative programme is changing lives and making an impact in a very positive way, and I know it will go from strength to strength.
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Rebecca Evans is assembly member for Mid and West Wales. She tweets @RebeccaEvansAM
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