LibLabCon failure on youth unemployment

The BBC is reporting on youth unemployment. I reproduce most of it here, with my own comments added in.

National schemes to tackle youth unemployment are not working, the group representing English councils has said.

Of course they are not working.  Schemes for the unemployed have a long and ignoble history of not working.  Why should the current rehash be expected to work where previous efforts have failed?

The LGA said the current system was over-complicated, with 35 different national schemes across 13 different age boundaries costing £15bn a year.

This may be a fair point, but even a simplified system would be a waste of money - not that we can expect communists to want to admit that.

The government has insisted it is not complacent about youth unemployment.

Which is a lie.  The government is complacent about 
youth unemployment just as it is complacent about unemployment generally, crime, public order, poverty, the NHS, and so on.

A Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) spokesman said: "This report fails to recognise that despite youth unemployment being a big challenge for a decade, the level has fallen by 38,000 since last year, and the number of young people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance has fallen for 14 consecutive months."

Those statistics are very poor.  If they really cared about tackling youth unemployment then they would reduce it by more like 38,000 every month.

He said the Youth Contract alone would offer help to nearly 500,000 young people over three years.

And a new traineeship programme would be launched in the autumn to help those without the right experience or qualifications to get an apprenticeship or a job, he added.

And the difference between an apprenticship and a job would be what exactly? 

On Wednesday, the Office for National Statistics said youth unemployment, among those aged 16-24, had increased by 15,000 in the three months to June to reach 973,000 despite a fall of 4000 in the overall level of unemployment.

So presumably the various schemes for young people are a complete farce and should all be abolished.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said 50,000 fewer jobless young people were getting help from job schemes today, than was the case three years ago, despite long-term youth unemployment remaining stubbornly high.

Given that these schemes serve no purpose, then surely any fall is to be welcomed.

Programmes include the Work Programme, which gives support to welfare claimants who need more help looking for and staying in work, and Youth Contracts, which create opportunities including apprenticeships and work experience.

Please see my previous comments about the Work Programme.

The LGA said that not only was the national system too complicated, but that "meddling" by successive governments had made the situation worse.
It said that only 27% of 16 and 17-year-olds starting the government's Youth Contract were helped into training or work.

This is typical communist weasel-speak.  We should not care how many people are helped into training or work.  We should care only about how many people are helped into jobs.  A training course is not a job.


David Simmonds, chair of the LGA's Children and Young People Board, added: "It's clear that nationally driven attempts to tackle youth unemployment aren't working.

"Many young people tell us that... finding a scheme that's right for them is a real challenge.

"While there are a number of good initiatives, government has side-lined councils and incentivised a series of services like schools, colleges and third sector providers to work in isolation of each other, with no clarity on who is responsible for leading the offer to young people on the ground.

"We think by aligning what's happening in local government with many of these schemes, we could get a lot more young people into work than is the case at the moment."

If all the schemes were abolished, we could probably get everyone into work.

Liam Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said David Cameron's government had "comprehensively failed young people".

True, but the last Labour government also failed young people, and everyone else as well.

"The Work Programme has missed every single one of its performance targets. The Youth Contract is on course to miss its targets by 92%.

I'll take his word for it.

"Ministers need to act now to introduce a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee to get any young person out of work for more than a year into a paying job - one they would be required to take."

That sounds good to me, but can we know why the last Labour government did not introduce a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee?  Also, if a future Labour government were to introduce such a scheme, then why not apply it to all unemployed people regardless of age?

I do not expect that a Labour government would seek to cut unemployment though, because far too many Labour supporters have jobs in the training sector.  Communists have been known to look after their own.