Job placement boss recalls the cost of mass unemployment

Article about mass unemployment and what to do.

She has uncomfortable memories of what she feels was the callous Thatcher  recession with its large-scale redundancies.

This time around she detects a more caring approach. “There’s been a good  response from employers, particularly trying to help young people by  offering them part-time jobs or work experience,” she says.

Youth unemployment has cast a long shadow over the jobless market and resulted  in a plethora of schemes to help youngsters avoid becoming the “lost  generation”. Training, support, advice, cash and temporary job openings  have been provided in abundance through a carrot-and-stick approach that  protects benefits for those wanting to re-enter the jobs market.
Faherty feels there are too many schemes with too many rules for agencies to  handle. “Some are quite prescriptive about what you can and can’t do.”

Faherty and her business are part of the private sector training network  contracted to the Government to try to find a pathway back to work for the  unemployed. Avanta’s contract in East Anglia involves putting 19,000 people  through their paces and finding jobs for them. If they are still employed  after six months, Faherty gets paid.

She feels that the most effective schemes are those close to the employer and  local labour market. “Any scheme that doesn’t do that is doomed in the  current climate,” says Faherty.

There are gaps in funding to support courses and initiatives to help the  unemployed. Britain has lost chunks of EU money because of the increase in  its contributions to the Brussels budget and the loss of benefits negotiated  during the Thatcher years. The fallout from the Learning & Skills  Council overspending crisis has also caused pain. “That shock is still  being felt,” says Faherty.

But are Faherty and co doing anything more than firefighting? She dismisses  the suggestion. “We’re pro-active. We are going out there to look for  new opportunities for people. A year ago we calculated there were four  people going for each job and thought that if it [unemployment] reached 3.5m  there could be 10. Fortunately we haven’t got to this point,” she adds.
She finds changes in the pattern of unemployment during her travels around the  country. “The position in the North East is very dire. Liverpool,  surprisingly, seems to be doing better than Manchester but that’s probably  because Liverpool is more dependant on the public sector and Manchester has  a heavy concentration of financial services.”

There have been no major changes in the way training and job agencies have  been tackling the problem this time round. Confidence building remains  crucial. Preparing the jobless to lower their employment horizons and be  flexible as well as determined are equally important. “You have a  problem convincing people there are still jobs out there.

Foreigners are picking up jobs British people just don’t want to do because there isn’t a  living wage for them to survive on. You’re not going to get an experienced steel worker who has lost his job on Teesside to go into Tesco.

“Employers want someone reliable, keen to learn and turning up on a  regular basis. Getting that message home to a young person who hasn’t any qualifications isn’t easy.”
Neither is scouting for jobs. Avanta has 1,000 employees in 50 centres around  the country providing intelligence about job openings. Faherty has been helping supermarket group Morrisons recruit workers for a new depot.

“If  you can work with people like Morrisons and convince them that taking on  unemployed people is good for the local community then you’ve accomplished  something.” She prides herself on one statistic – “80pc of all people coming to us never go back on benefits”.

That said, Faherty shudders to think what will happen if there is a double-dip recession. “It’s going to shred confidence.”