Policy brief: Increasing the employability of disadvantaged youth (original) (raw)
Related papers
Youth unemployment inititiatives and the impact on disadvantaged youth.
2012
Executive Summary Young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, can become trapped in unemployment or 'poor jobs'. This article outlines findings from two Scottish case studies of third sector run employability programmes aimed at getting disadvantaged young people, aged 16-25, back into work.
From crisis to credibility: the need for quality jobs for young people
European View, 2013
The youth unemployment crisis that has unravelled in Europe since 2008 has dramatically impacted the lives of young people. The transition from education to employment has become increasingly difficult. Not only is the rate of youth unemployment at record levels, but young people are more likely to be in poorly paid and precarious jobs. As a result, the number of young people at risk of poverty and social exclusion has been growing steadily throughout Europe. This article aims to contextualise youth unemployment in terms of the changes to the European economy and European social model over the past 20 years, and to propose areas that need to be addressed in order to reduce unemployment and positively impact the lives of young people in Europe.
Young people and employment: challenging workfare and dead end jobs
Resist! Against a Precarious Future, 2015
Youth unemployment is one of the clearest indications that young people are suffering more than any other generation from the implications of the 2008 financial crisis, and the subsequent policy responses of Britain’s political elite. But an ongoing assault on pay and conditions means that even for many of those young people who are in employment, work can be a miserable experience. We should not assume that these problems are simply the result of the financial crisis; the economic downturn exacerbated trends that were already evident, and that were constitutive of the transformation of the British economy under the stewardship of neoliberalism. This chapter charts, specifically, how unemployment has been individualised, and demonstrates how young people can collectively fight back. It begins by situating young people’s labour market woes within the emergence of a low-wage, services-led economy in Britain, and then offers an account of the real motives behind the coalition government’s failing Work Programme and related initiatives. It argues that the path away from this economy, created in neoliberalism’s image, will not be found for today’s young people by simply adopting a new agenda for labour market policy, but rather by mobi lising in support of a new political economy of employment and work, with radical trade unionism at its heart.
The impact of student and migrant employment on opportunities for lowskilled people
This study seeks to understand the issues and challenges faced by those looking for low skilled work, and those already engaged in these roles. Particular attention is drawn to rising student and migrant employment in low skilled work, and whether this impacts the opportunities available for low skilled people. It improves our understanding of the changing nature of low skilled work, and the attitudes and motivations of low skilled people and employers in one local economic area. It illustrates the importance of the local economic and demographic context when seeking to promote employment and progression in work amongst low skilled people. It highlights the job search priorities and techniques employed by different groups of individuals when seeking low skilled work; and explores how far they match those of employers. The study represents a valuable contribution to the policy debate around creating a sustainable market for skills that can support economic growth and individual progression for all.
There are two kinds of policy intervention -preventative and curative. A preventative intervention tries to counteract the processes that generate a problem; a curative intervention tries to deal with their consequences. In the case of poverty, for instance, a curative intervention will find out where the poor are and try to alleviate their situation; a preventative intervention will analyze the causes of poverty and devise strategies to prevent it. In the case of youth employment policy, there is a similar distinction: this paper tries to shift the emphasis from curative towards preventative interventions -from treating the symptoms to dealing with the underlying causes 2 .
Jobs and youth unemployment: it's bad, but not as bad as you might think
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2010
inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the other postwar recessions. Nevertheless, unemployment is much lower than we would have expected given past experience. Young people have fared badly during the recession, with larger increases in their unemployment rates than adults. But young people always do worse in downturns and there is no evidence that young people are doing relatively worse this time round than in previous recessions. The youth labour market deteriorated after 2004, prior to the onset of the recession. The reasons for this are not well understood-the weakening of the adult labour market can only account for some of the rise in youth unemployment. Increased immigration, minimum wages, skill demand changes and schooling are possible explanations, but there is little compelling evidence for any of these factors. Labour's welfare reformssuch as the New Deal for Young People introduced in 1998have had a positive impact on jobs. But after 2004 the Employment Service de-emphasised the young unemployed compared to other groups (e.g. lone parents and those on incapacity benefits) and this may be a factor in the post-2004 rise in youth unemployment. The trends for 18-24 year olds Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) follow the same pattern as youth unemployment. NEET rates for 16-17 year olds are very high (and rising) only if we include all part-time students. When these are removed teenage NEET rates are more like 10%.
Intereconomics, 2013
For example, in the UK, the short-and long-term consequences of high youth unemployment and low participation in employment and training have been found to be far-reaching. The Commission on Youth Unemployment showed that young people aged 16-24 years who were unemployed were more likely to spend longer out of work throughout their lives, be paid less when in work, 3 have poorer mental and physical well-being and be involved in criminal activity. 4 It was estimated that in 2012 alone the costs of youth unemployment were £4.8 billion, plus £10.7 billion in lost output, and in subsequent years this will cost £2.9 billion and £6.3 billion per year respectively. 5