Youth contract ‘only helping one in ten’
By Oliver Hotham
Only one in ten young people will be aided by the government's youth contract policy, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) claims in a report released today.
The report also claims the unpaid work experience scheme is not helping young people find work.
The government, it says, needs to be more ambitious if it is to reverse some of the highest rates of young unemployment in years.
Paul Bivand, who authored the report, said: "It is vitally important that actions to help young people can be shown to work. Young people themselves want to know this, so do co-workers in the workplace, and so do the employers who are placing their reputations at risk.
"We would hope that good quality work experience with training would have a small positive effect compared to Jobcentre Plus support, but the evidence needs to stand up to critique. We are not there yet."
It recommended the introduction of a job guarantee scheme, the strengthening of regulations on apprenticeships and the establishment of a government goal that by 2020 young people in Britain should be as well qualified for jobs as those in any other developed country.
The report also claimed that 51% of young people who have been on the Work Experience program are no longer claiming benefits after 13 weeks. This figure, however, is roughly the same for all young people.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said that the government's austerity policies like tuition fees and the scrapping of the EMA have made things worse for young people.
He echoed the fears that the new youth contract would not be nearly sufficient.
