Youth unemployment crisis - more needs to be done, says Unite

12 May 2011

Coalition plans to reverse the steep rise in youth unemployment will be little more than 'a mirage', unless it is mirrored by a programme to boost manufacturing and create demand in the economy, Unite said today (Thursday, 12 May).

Unite, the largest union in the country, questioned where the private sector jobs were going to come from when growth in the economy was so flaccid.

Unite described the government's £60m package to create apprenticeships and work placements in private firms as 'paltry' and 'a drop in the ocean', as youth unemployment in the 16-24 year age bracket stood at record levels.

Unite's General Secretary, Len McCluskey said: 'The government's claim that it is providing funding for 250,000 more apprenticeships in the next four years and 100,000 work placements over the next two years will be a mirage without other efforts to revive our ailing economy.'

'Ministers speak with a forked tongue on this issue. On one hand, you have Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith saying that he wants to tackle the scandal of youth unemployment, yet the coalition scrapped Labour's £1bn Future Jobs Fund which helped many young unemployed people back to work and have priced them out of education.'

'We don't want a McJobs economy – young people scraping by on low incomes with living standards far lower than their parents – but proper well-paid jobs in manufacturing that ensures Britain remains a strong, innovative and competitive player in the world economy.'

'Growth is sluggish, not helped by the huge amount of demand sucked out of the economy by Chancellor, George Osborne's obsession with the 'cut and cut again' philosophy to the exclusion of all other economic remedies.'

'Business needs more comprehensive help from government if it is to power the recovery. And young people need more from a government that has pledged to stay wedded to savage economic policies that even Mrs Thatcher would have blanched at.'

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