SCLO MD Steve O'Hare says there are plenty of efforts being made to help the country bounce back from some worrying unemployment figures.
With thousands upon thousands of people losing their jobs at the minute, there is every reason to feel a sense of impending gloom about the UK jobs market.
As I write, the current unemployment figures stand at 4.8%.
While the negative hit to those figures is unlikely to stop for a while yet, it is important to note that the Government is trying to do something about it.
There is stuff happening and they are trying to address the issues this nation faces after an unprecedented hit to our health and, subsequently, our economy.
The Job Retention Scheme is a colossal investment by the Government to keep the economy and people’s livelihoods ticking over while we battle Covid-19.
It’s an unprecedented injection of cash into the economy over a long period (now continuing until March 2021) which is made even more incredible by the fact that it is a Conservative Government in charge of the purse strings!
Job losses
High on the Government’s list of areas to support is the 18 to 24-year-old group who have been hammered by pandemic-related job losses in sectors dominated by younger parts of the population like leisure and hospitality.
A key part of that planned recovery is The Plan for Jobs which will provides new funding to ensure more people will get tailored support to help them to find work.
The recently procured 19 to 24-year-olds Traineeship Programme and the soon to be let 16-18 equivalent are part of the huge drive to get those people most affected by the pandemic back into work and reinvigorate the economy.
And there is the Kickstart Scheme, a £2 billion fund to create hundreds of thousands of high quality six-month work placements aimed at those aged 16-24 who are on Universal Credit and are deemed to be at risk of long-term unemployment.
Lockdown
These programmes are being implemented at the end of 2020 and the start of 2021. It will be interesting to see how effective they are and, given the additional lockdown we are enduring in November, what additional elements are brought in which are not currently there.
The current situation may be bleak in terms of the health of our nation and the seemingly never-ending stream of job losses.
But with a vaccine being possibly rolled out in December and a raft of Government money being pumped into the jobs market too, a brighter outlook may be just around the corner.
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