Achieving Full Employment in 2010 - a New Year's wish

Just before the Christmas break the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) launched its latest White Paper Building Britain’s Recovery – Achieving Full Employment. Straight after the break we have The Prince’s Trust YouGov Youth Index 2010 survey. This includes the claim, which is already well-established in the popular mind, that young people are hit hardest by the recession. It also forecasts that there is going to be a lost generation of youth.

The White Paper more positive – it is full of aspiration and is optimistic about the possibilities. The aspiration is for an 80 per cent employment rate – and hats off to that. There are plenty of well trailed policy initiatives in here for youth in the labour market, alongside some gently understated statistical reminders that the 16 to 25 unemployment data has been overblown. 

But for me the most under-rated possibilities are around the over 50s might achieve with a bit more backing.

Curiously the White Paper did not give a statistical analysis of the change in 50+ unemployment between this current recession and the last one back in the 90s. But it did give one for the 16 to 25 age group.

If the both older and younger age groups had been compared a contrast in their experience would have stood out. Things are better this time around for the 16 to 25 cohort, but worse in unemployment terms for those over 50.

There is a recognition in the White Paper that the over 50s are facing age discrimination. It also recognises that self-employment for those over 50 is very important for the labour market, and Jobcentre Plus needs to respond to this.

Pre-empting the launch of the White Paper by a month, every Jobcentre Plus in England and Scotland started displaying PRIME leaflets on 50+ self-employment and enterprise. And the response has been huge.

My New Year’s wish for 2010 is that our society will realise that a workless future is just as depressing for a 50 year old as for a twenty year old. The feeling of being rejected by society does not lesson with age; if anything it becomes since the prospect of your plight being recognised and any help arriving is worse.

Let us pray that White Papers are like white Christmases: that they make dreams become reality.

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