Damian wrote the following for The Portsmouth News:
There are around 100,000 more young people looking for work than there were a year ago, and youth unemployment has reached its highest level for a decade, even higher than during the pandemic.
Former minister Alan Milburn recently warned that Britain risks creating a "lost generation" unless far more is done to help young people into work. He is right.
The Government appears to recognise the scale of the challenge. Last year it announced a range of initiatives including work support sessions, employment pathways and youth hubs. Ministers have pointed to these programmes as evidence that action is being taken.
But programmes alone will not solve the problem.
The real issue is that businesses must be willing, and able, to create jobs in the first place. While economic growth remains sluggish, recent government decisions have made employing people more costly and more complicated.
Changes to employment law may be well intentioned, but they also increase the cost and risk of taking on staff. Measures to restrict zero-hours contracts, for example, may unintentionally remove an important route into first employment. Like many News readers, my own first job was a zero-hours contract (though we didn’t call it that back then).
For countless students and school leavers, a first job is not a permanent, full-time role. It is a few shifts a week in a cafe, a supermarket or a pub, fitting work around education or training. Those jobs do far more than provide a pay packet. They build confidence, teach responsibility, and provide the experience future employers will look for.
In East Hampshire, we are fortunate to have organisations working hard to help young people get started. East Hampshire District Council's apprenticeship scheme helps local businesses with first-year funding assistance, while the Click Jobs Fair, organised by the Council and the DWP, happening in Alton this September, will showcase careers including in digital and technology to local jobseekers, particularly young people. These positive initiatives deserve support.
But they cannot succeed in isolation. If businesses are reluctant to recruit because costs continue to rise, local schemes can only do so much.
Government policy must focus just as much on creating jobs as it does on preparing young people for them. That means creating an environment in which businesses have the confidence to grow, invest and recruit. Without that, we risk failing a generation of young people just as they are trying to take their first steps into the world of work.