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IPPR warns government over youth unemployment

13/08/2014

The youth unemployment problem in the UK will not be solved by an economic recovery, the Institute for Public Policy (IPPR) has warned in a report.

The report said that although youth unemployment has been falling steadily, there are still around 868,000 unemployed 16 to 24 year-olds in the UK. The IPPR said that one of the biggest problems is a ‘mismatch’ between what these youths are being trained to do and what jobs are actually available.

For example, the report claimed that 94,000 16-24 year-olds have a health and beauty qualification despite there only being 18,000 jobs of this nature. In contrast, there are only 123,000 youths trained for the construction and engineering industry, despite there being an estimated 275,000 jobs advertised.

One possible solution to this mismatch could be for the UK government to promote a more vocational route to education, as countries that do this generally have lower youth unemployment rates, according to the IPPR.

Tony Dolphin, chief economist at IPPR said: "A strong workplace-based vocational education and training system, with high employer involvement, contributes more to a smoother transition from education to work and a low rate of youth unemployment than anything else."

He also went on to praise other European countries who have taken a vocational route to education by saying: "We can learn lots from countries like Germany and the Netherlands”.

Youth employment on the increase



The Department for Work and Pensions disregarded the report, saying it was “misleading”, as the number of workless youths has actually dropped in recent years, and it now stands at around 530,000.

A spokesperson said: "Youth employment is up, youth unemployment has been dropping for 10 months in a row and the number of young people claiming the main unemployment benefit has dropped for 31 months in a row to around 250,000".

However, whilst the IPPR has conceded that youth employment figures appear to be improving, they continued to argue that there are fundamental problems that need to be solved. They said that 247,000 16-24 year olds have been unemployed for more than a year and 700,000 have never even had a job.



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