Despite the fanfare around the Milburn report, the Labour frontbench has said little new or shown any real urgency. The DWP put a junior minister on TV this week to officially announce the government plan to offer 300,000 work placements (these can be relatively short, even just a week).
This decision, part of Labour’s Youth Guarantee predates Milburn, as does the promise of a 6-month paid employment opportunity for young people that have been out of work and claiming Universal Credit for 18 months – but with only around 50 000 of 1 million NEETs eligible.
It was therefore encouraging that incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham included the plight of jobless young people in his first major speech, in Manchester this week. Echoing Milburn, Burnham said a “complete rethink” was required with a variety of measures from increased mental health support at work, to giving local mayors more devolved powers over employment.
But improving the dire situation facing NEETs would cost billions and even if after fending off pressure from ‘the markets’ , Burnham goes ahead with appointing Ed Miliband as the new Chancellor, this expenditure can’t be guaranteed. It was perhaps for this reason, his comments centred on a promise to expand technical education – giving every young person a “clear path” and on “rebalancing the focus on the university route”. Burnham’s interest in technical education has been long standing. As mayor he used delated powers to instigate the ‘Manchester Baccalaureate’ – a wrap around certificate made up of technical, vocational, but including ‘core’ subjects, as an alternative to the academic Ebacc.
Improved technical education might well play a role in what Burnham describes as the ‘re-industrialisation’ of Britain, but it won’t in itself create new jobs. Its also very unclear what, beyond opening an alternative ‘number 10’ in Manchester, Burnham means by re-industrialisation, let alone how it would square with an alternative Green New Deal that would have the potential to develop very different opportunities for employing young people.
However what’s most concerning is the way that political leaders and policy wonks, desperate to keep youth unemployment out of the headlines, but also (even if around half of NEETs don’t claim any benefits) to control the welfare bill, restrict the crisis of young people and employment to those at the bottom end of the labour market. Just as it’s mistaken to blame the expansion of the university sector for crowding out the development of (ill-defined) ‘intermediate’ skills.
It’s true that the market driven and increasingly privatised university sector, desperate to fill courses and put ‘bums on seats’ spends millions on recruitment and will turn few applicants away. But it’s also the case that in the absence of real alternatives young people have turned to higher education in their thousands, understanding that ‘getting qualified’, if it doesn’t land them a ‘graduate job’ should at least improve their position in the labour queue.
At the moment it still does, relative to others, yet without major economic and labour market reforms, will it continue to be enough?
Education, Economy and Society 