Young people want to work: now there may be jobs for them | Polly Toynbee

2026-03-17 - 07:12

I spent a week at a London jobcentre. Those I met were smart and eager to work – and now they have a government willing to help them Labour did it before. Can it do it again, with things being so much harder now? New Labour’s new deal for the young unemployed levered large numbers of people into work, but in 1998 the economy was on the upswing. Now, economic stagnation has resulted in falling vacancies and rising unemployment. And Donald Trump’s war threatens much worse in the future. Today the Department for Work and Pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, promises “life-changing opportunities to young people” to “significantly reverse the increase we inherited in those not in education, employment or training”, now numbering nearly a million. A major boost will be the greatly extended youth jobs guarantee, offering six-month-long subsidised-wage roles for unemployed 18- to 24-year-olds. And a youth jobs grant will offer employers a £3,000 subsidy to hire young people who are on benefits and have been out of work for six months. It mirrors the Future Jobs Fund that Labour brought in, after the financial crash, in 2009 – one of its most successful programmes, which boosted participants’ chance of employment by 27%, with a net gain per participant of £7,750 in increased wages and tax receipts and reduced benefit payments. (David Cameron scrapped it in 2010 without waiting to see those results.) Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink? On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here or at guardian.live Continue reading...