£2billion scheme to kickstart 300,000 young people’s careers
THE Government will pay the wages of young people for six months, as part of a new “Kickstart” job creation scheme.
The £2billion package will subsidise six-month work placements for 16-24-year-olds on Universal Credit and at risk of long-term unemployment.
Rishi Sunak said that he was making the intervention to avoid an entire generation being “left behind”.
It is hoped the scheme will create more than 300,000 “good quality” sixmonth placements, with the Govern- ment paying employers directly.
The Chancellor said: “Under-25s are two-and-a-half times as likely to work in a sector that has been closed.
“We cannot lose this generation. So today, I’m announcing the Kickstart Scheme, a new programme to give hundreds of thousands of young people in every region and nation of Britain, the best possible chance of getting on and getting a job.”
The funding will be conditional on businesses proving the roles are new and employ staff for at least 25 hours a week on minimum wage. Firms will also be obliged to provide further training, such as helping young people improve their interview skills.
There will be no cap on the number of placements and the scheme will be open to applications from August, with the first jobs expected to begin in the autumn. People who take part in the new scheme cannot also be apprentices, the Treasury confirmed.
The Confederation of British Industry praised the scheme as “a muchneeded down payment in young people’s futures”.
But the National Institute of Economic and Social Research warned the offer to pay young people’s wages could suffer from “low take-up” as it was only available for additional jobs.
David Hughes, the Association of Colleges chief executive, said it was important to “see more of the details and vitally how this all fits together” with education and skills provision.
Torsten Bell, the Resolution Foundation chief executive, said the scheme was a “very welcome return” to the approach of Labour’s Future Jobs Fund.
Unveiled by Alistair Darling in 2009, the Labour policy supported the creation of subsidised jobs for unemployed young people but was scrapped by the coalition government a year later. It focused on 18-24-year-olds who had been out of work for a year or more and delivered grants of up to £6,500 per person for jobs lasting at least six months.
Mr Bell said the similar Kickstart Scheme could create more than 300,000 jobs but warned “creating that many will be a huge delivery challenge” and would need many of the jobs to be created by local authorities.
Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “The folly of the Government’s brutal treatment of councils over the last decade will return to haunt them.”
Research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies found employees aged under 25 were about two and a half times as likely to work in a sector that is shut down because of coronavirus.