Labour to expand youth work experience and training schemes

Ministers are expanding youth work experience and training schemes, after Alan Milburn warned Britain is spending £25 keeping young people on benefits for every £1 spent helping them into work. Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary will announce plans for 300,000 extra work experience placements over the next three years as Labour attempts to tackle what the minister described as a “quiet crisis” in youth employment. Nearly 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training (Neet), with McFadden warning that almost 60% have never had a job at all. “It’s a quiet crisis, a ticking timebomb, which risks their future working lives,” he said, adding: “It’s hardest for young people without family connections. No job because they have no experience and no experience because they don’t have a job.” McFadden told the Guardian that many traditional “first rung” jobs had disappeared as retail employment declined and the pandemic disrupted workplace experience for younger people. “Talent is spread evenly across the country, but opportunity is not,” he said. New analysis for the DWP suggests young people taking part in this scheme are 13% more likely to be in work two years later than their counterparts who did not take part, while four in 10 people move into sustained employment within six months. …