The UK government has recruited 13,500 ‘Work Coaches’ to help people find their next role, start a new career or re-train in growing industries, and 150 youth employability coaches to help get young people struggling to find work onto the jobs ladder.
The recruitment drives form part of its multibillion-pound Plan for Jobs. The ‘Jobs Army’ is supporting jobseekers with personalised support to build their skills, develop CVs and find new jobs.
Jobseekers aged between 19 and 24 will receive “intensive support and mentoring training” for up to six months from a ‘coach’ specially trained to support young jobseekers facing significant barriers to work, such as a lack of formal skills or qualifications.
Young people are among those worst hit by the economic fallout of the pandemic, particularly black young people.
According to the Office for National Statistics’ March 2021 Labour Market Review, under-25s made up nearly two-thirds of the fall in people in paid employment since February 2020, constituting more than 60% of the 693,000 payroll employees who’ve lost their jobs since that date.
Another report, from the independent think-tank Resolution Foundation’s study, Uneven steps: Changes in youth employment and study since the onset of Covid-19, highlights that young black workers are nearly twice as likely as peers to be unemployed.
The report finds that between the second and third quarters of 2020 the unemployment rate among 18 to 24-year-olds jumped from 11.5% to 13.6% – an 18% increase for this age group and the highest quarterly rise since 1992. But the rise was even greater among black graduates, who saw unemployment increase from 22% pre-pandemic to 34%, compared to an unemployment rate of 25% among Asian graduates and 12% among white graduates.
The report’s author, Kathleen Henehan, senior research and policy analyst at Resolution Foundation, called for more “avenues to help young people into the workplace; providing them with support to stay in – or return to – education and training; and working with employers and employment support providers to tackle bias and discrimination in the hiring process and career progression more generally.”