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Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called for employers to receive a £ 100 weekly wage subsidy to hire workers under 25 as part of a plan to prevent youth unemployment from exceeding levels seen in the 1980s.
Brown said 1.5 million young people would need help finding work over the next year, adding that the government’s £ 2 billion kickstart plan announced in the summer would not be enough.
The former Labor leader, and prime minister during the financial crisis of the late 2000s, said research by employment expert Professor Paul Gregg highlighted how job losses from the Covid-19 pandemic were concentrated among the under 25 years old.
Brown said: “This report plots the arithmetic of deprivation and desolation as youth unemployment spirals out of control and this will alarm all parents in all regions and nations of Britain. Today we are faced with a much greater challenge than in the 1980s and a UK-wide jobs summit is needed bringing regions and nations together with the Prime Minister.
“Some will say that this is too difficult to organize given the current breakdown of relations between the number 10 and the regions and nations, but if we don’t hear what is happening on the ground and mobilize all resources from across the UK – local and at the national level, and working together to coordinate our response, we will fail a generation of young people as surely as we did for too long in the 1980s. “
According to Gregg’s research, in the summer there were 700,000 young people who needed help finding work or training, but their number increased with 500,000 graduates and graduates of school, and those under 25 years old lost their jobs as a result of the end of the licensing scheme or because companies were closing in areas with local closures.
In his summer mini-budget, Rishi Sunak announced a £ 2 billion plan to fund 350,000 six-month job placements for those under 25, saying: “Young people are hit hardest by most economic crises, But they are at particular risk this time because they work in sectors disproportionately hit by the pandemic.
“We also know that youth unemployment has a long-term impact on jobs and wages and we don’t want that to happen to this generation.”
Brown said the government’s plan would not provide high-quality work experience and would only help those who had been out of work for six months and had universal credit.
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The former prime minister said elements of a plan to address youth unemployment should include:
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Provision of quality work experience.
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Training aimed at new jobs, in sectors such as healthcare, IT and logistics, positions related to the recovery of laboratory technicians and contact tracers, healthcare workers and teaching aids, no training for continued unemployment.
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Help with finding a job, which Brown said was a vital starting point for work, as evidenced by Labor’s 2009 Future Jobs Fund.
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An employer wage subsidy of the order of £ 100 per week for six months to hire a young person full time.
