Tuesday 18 Oct 2011 @ 11:37
Think Tanks
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Young people and women hit hardest by jobs crisis

last week's unemployment figures show that young people and women are being hit hardest by Britain’s jobs crisis, with the highest numbers out of work for a generation.

Analysis by the think tank IPPR of last week's unemployment figures show that:

  • Overall, 867,000 people have been unemployed for more than a year, the highest for 15 years
  • Of those, 227,000 young people (aged 18-24) have been unemployed for more than a year, the highest for 17 years
  • Almost a million (991,000) young people (aged 16-24) are now unemployed, the highest since comparable records began in 1992
  • More than million women (1,069,000) are now unemployed, the highest for 23 years
  • Of those, almost a third of women (303,000) have been unemployed for more than a year, the highest since 1994

IPPR Director, Nick Pearce, said:

last week's figures show that young people and women are being hit hardest by Britain’s jobs crisis, with the highest numbers out of work for a generation.

“Being out of work for more than a year can have a scarring affect, making it harder to get a job as well as having a negative impact on one’s health and well-being. The government’s decision to abolish job guarantees for young people may leave a generation of young people scarred for many years to come.

“The longer someone is out of work, the more they lose motivation and confidence. They also miss out on vital training and work experience. This means that even when employment starts to pick up again, they will find it hard to compete with other jobseekers and could find themselves permanently shut out of the jobs market. The longer someone is unemployed, the less likely they are to ever return to work. The government should guarantee everyone who has been unemployed for more than a year a job at the minimum wage.”

Notes to Editors

Unemployment figures published last week are available from: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/october-2011/index.html

IPPR’s new report – Jobs for the Future: The path back to full employment in the UK - is available from http://www.ippr.org/publications/55/7938/jobs-for-the-future-the-path-back-to-full-employment-in-the-uk

The recommendations in IPPR’s report include:

  • The Government should provide a guaranteed job, paid at the minimum wage or above, to anyone who has been unemployed and claiming JSA for more than 12 consecutive months. The guarantee should be matched by an obligation to take up the offer or to find an alternative that does not involve claiming JSA. The job should be for no more than 30 hours a week to allow a reasonable amount of time each week for job search and should last a maximum of six months. Jobs could be provided by the third sector or local government.
  • To strengthen routes into apprenticeships for long-term unemployed young people and to improve uptake among employers, clearer guidance should be given to Work Programme providers on the role they can play and the barriers to their participation should be removed.
  • The Government should make the provision of better local labour market information a priority. Initially, the focus should be on JobCentre Plus, which, as part of its role, should provide job seekers with information about current and possible future trends in employment demand in their locality and surrounding areas. Eventually, this information should be made more widely available through government websites.
  • A UK-wide scheme should to introduced, along the lines of the Welsh ReACT scheme, to encourage people who are made redundant to retrain for work in other sectors and to encourage employers to recruit and train them. This scheme should last throughout the period of large-scale job cuts in the public sector, when redundancies in the whole economy are likely to be abnormally high, but should be available to workers formerly employed in the public and private sectors.
  • The Government should announce a £5 billion increase in capital spending to improve the country’s infrastructure and boost employment in the beleaguered construction industry.
  • The Government should reconsider its decisions to reduce the amount of childcare support that can be claimed through the tax credit system and to integrate the childcare element of the tax credit into the Universal Credit. It should plan to introduce a single, integrated funding system for childcare that merges tax credit provision and the tax relief provided for childcare vouchers. This system should support all parents, but offer the greatest amount of support for those on low incomes.

Contact

Richard Darlington, 07525 481 602, r.darlington@ippr.org

Tim Finch, 07595 920899, t.finch@ippr.org

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