Youth unemployment nears one million mark
13 April 2011 09:58
Campaign groups fear that youth unemployment will reach a record high today and edge nearer the politically-sensitive one million mark when new jobless figures are revealed.
The TUC said the UK was set to pass another "grim milestone" because of the increasing numbers of 16 to 24-year-olds out of work.
The total increased by 30,000 to 974,000 in the quarter to January, the highest since records began in 1992, giving a jobless rate of more than 20%.
New data on pay rises from the Office for National Statistics today will also be closely monitored to see how far they are trailing behind the rate of inflation, which is running at 5.3% on the retail prices index compared with 2.3% for the average earnings rise in the year to January.
The TUC said that the rising earnings gap, combined with tax credit changes and "deep" spending cuts, was causing real pain in the UK's "so-called" economic recovery.
General secretary Brendan Barber said: "The country could be passing another grim milestone with youth unemployment hitting another record high.
"The Government's decision to scrap the Future Jobs Fund, months before its poorly funded replacement is due to start, has helped drive the rise in the number of young people out of work.
"Scrapping Education Maintenance Allowance and hiking university tuition fees will only further reduce the job chances of young people and, with inflation rising at over twice the level of earnings, things aren't looking pretty for those in work either.
"From the VAT rise and tax credit changes to growth-stunting spending cuts, the Chancellor has a direct hand in rising joblessness and falling household incomes.
"The economic facts are clear - unemployment is up and household debt is set to rise, while growth forecasts are down. The Government must change course before it causes even more damage."
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development today urged the Government to compile a comprehensive audit of job losses in the public sector, which is being hit by spending cuts.
Economic adviser Dr John Philpott said the move was needed because of an "apparent disconnect" between estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and predictions from other organisations.
The OBR has cut its forecast of predicted job cuts between 2014 and 2015 from 490,000 to 310,000, but this contrasted with other reports, he said.
"The Government should at the earliest opportunity publish a comprehensive administrative audit of public sector jobs cuts drawn from available figures on workforce reductions being currently planned and/or being implemented across the public sector.
"Ideally, this would include information on the various ways in which reductions are being undertaken, whether through compulsory or voluntary redundancies, recruitment freezes or natural turnover."
"There is a wide confidence interval between the wilder upper-end of speculation on likely public sector job losses and the most optimistic end of the scale," said Dr Philpott.
"A comprehensive audit of this kind would help close this gap, giving far greater clarity to ongoing debate about the scale and phasing of public sector job cuts and improving assessment of the possible impact on unemployment at the national, regional and local levels."
Another report by recruitment firm de Poel showed that use of temporary agency workers increased by 10% last month compared with a year ago.
Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: "We are committed to tackling youth unemployment with help that actually works rather than schemes which sound nice but fail to deliver real jobs.
"The sad truth is that youth unemployment has been rising since long before the recession and the last Government failed time after time to get to grips with it. That's why our priority is to invest in the economy to create the right conditions so that companies are confident and start hiring young people, and to work intensively with those young people so that they are work ready when a job opportunity is presented.
"As announced in the Budget, our new work experience scheme will give 100,000 young people valuable experience of working in a business for up to two months and we've just announced up to 50,000 additional apprenticeships.
"Our new Work Programme, which comes on stream in the summer, will give everyone including young people the proper support and training to help them into work whatever barriers they face."
Prime Minister David Cameron told ITV1'S Daybreak: "For youth unemployment, which has actually been going up for years in our country, the real change we need is actually in our education system to make sure we are producing young people at the age of 18 with a real qualification that people need in the modern workplace."
He also called for "really good voluntary sector organisations" to help advise young people on getting jobs.
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