Employability Day 2024 takes place on Friday 28 June

This year’s theme is: Employment Support for Every Citizen

Celebrating its ninth year, Employability Day 2024 promises to be the important one yet. Against the backdrop of social, political and economic changes, Friday 28^th June, presents an opportunity for the whole sector to come together and showcase the impactful work on individuals and communities we’ve achieved over the past few years.

We’ve successful worked to keep long-term unemployment down, made strides to close the disability employment gap, and provided vital support to millions of people to overcome their barriers to work. Together, we have created a community of employability specialists all over the UK and have done the difficult job of keeping the labour market developing effectively even during times that are challenging.

This year’s theme is Employment Support for Every Citizen. Despite our huge strides as a sector, millions of people still want support to find work but can’t access it. However, as organisations and individuals we have the experience and solutions to overcome the challenges facing our labour market:

·       Getting people good jobs

·       In-work progression

·       Career changes

·       Returning to work

·       Linking up skills and employment

·       Employer engagement

·       Linking up health and employment

As we navigate upcoming cliff-edges of programmes and funding within the next 12 months, let’s utilise Employability Day 2024 to champion ourselves and campaign for sustained, long-term funding solutions that benefit providers, employers, and most importantly, the people we support.

 

Downloadable content for social media and delivery sites: 

• Social media image 1
• Social media image 2
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• Sample Letter to local MP/other stakeholders 
• Press Release for upcoming event

What are you planning?

Contact Henry via policy@ersa.org.uk

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What are the barriers to employment for young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) or who have experience of care? What works best to support them? In partnership with the Education Development Trust (EDT), our latest report draws conclusions from a survey of practitioners and young people to understand the barriers they face, what services are offered, and what is considered to work best in helping NEET young people – and especially care leavers – to progress into work.

More than one in ten young people in the UK between the ages of 16 and 24 are classified as not in employment, education or training (NEET), and the rate of youn

g people being NEET has not fallen below 10% over the last twenty years. We know that being NEET can have immediate negative consequences for a young person, such as decreasing levels of self-esteem, increasing the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviours such as substance misuse and criminal activities, and increasing their chances of living in poverty. While there has been much research into the factors that lead to becoming NEET, how these can be mitigated, and the impacts of being NEET, there is not the same body of evidence to inform the support provided to young people to move into and stay in education, employment and training (EET).

This study looks at what the existing research has to say and surveys young people and the practitioners who work with them on four key questions:

• What is currently offered in terms of in-work support for young people and care leavers?
• What are the key barriers to EET for young people and care leavers who are NEET?
• What is currently offered to young people and care leavers in terms of entry to EET support?
• What types of provision are most effective at dealing with the barriers young people face to EET?

Drawing out lessons for practitioners and policymakers, this study contributes to our understanding of what young people see as the issues, the support they need and what service providers are offering to some of the most vulnerable people in society.

The executive summary and full survey report ‘Entry and retention in the labour market: Narratives and solutions for NEET and care leaver employment support’ can be accessed here.

Policy and recommendations summary here.

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Employability Day 2023 takes place on Friday 30 June. This year’s theme is: #WorkingForBetterWork.

The UK labour market is transforming in front of us. 4.4 million people worked in the gig economy last year; working from home is now the norm for many sectors of the economy; in-work poverty and universal credit; economic inactivity and the flight of older people from the labour market; green jobs and emerging technologies.

The work ERSA members have done over the past decade has kept long-term unemployment down, supported millions of people to overcome their barriers to work. ERSA members have created a community of employability specialists all over the UK and have done the difficult job of keeping the labour market developing effectively even during times that are challenging.

At the core of ERSA’s members is their drive and determination to create solutions for a fairer labour market. Over twenty years, the sector has developed their offer alongside huge changes in society and economy. Supporting a person’s journey to work is one of the most rewarding achievements and the UK has an advantage because it has ERSA members.

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ERSA has been working on replacement of the European Social Fund for employment, skills and anti poverty programmes since 2016. More recently we have engaged with Ministers, Number 10, DWP and DLUHC arguing that England’s People and Skills be brought forward to 2023. We know what employment support providers can and should be delivering now!

Therefore, we are relieved and pleased to have received this communication today:

“The Prime Minister recently set out a clear direction to focus on building the skills capability of people across the UK, so that they can realise their potential and increase workforce participation rates and our prosperity and productivity as a country.

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund is already well aligned with this goal as the main source of funding to support economically inactive individuals move towards employment. To maximise the impact of the Fund in this area, we will remove the restriction on people and skills spending from April 2023 in England. This will enable lead local authorities to allocate UKSPF funding to any people and skills intervention to an individual, partnership or any delivery partner, during the second and third year of the Fund. Previously, this flexibility was not available in England until April 2024.

We will continue to stand by our pledge to let local places decide what is best for their areas, working closely with key stakeholders, and deploy funds flexibly across the local growth agenda and UKSPF funded employment priorities which are intended to dovetail with the national Department for Work and Pensions offer and other locally delivered complimentary support, including Multiply. To support the effectiveness of this suite of provision for recipients and to minimise administrative burdens on lead authorities and providers, we continue to advise lead authorities to work collectively across broader geographies to ensure the package of employment and skills interventions are fully integrated.

This change will be done with the least amount of bureaucracy as lead local authorities can make these changes through routine end-of-year reporting, no additional notifications to DLUHC will be required”.

ERSA’s work on SPF will continue.

ERSA’s work on UKSPF

Contact the team via policy@ersa.org.uk if you have something to share!

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This briefing is an addendum to ERSA’s usual monthly Labour Market Briefing (LMB) which provides our members with the latest labour market data and policy and research updates. In particular, it provides a longer and fuller exploration of the latest labour market data and trends that is drawn from the Office of National Statistics’ (ONS) monthly update. We felt this was a good time to expand what we do on this front given the current turbulent state of Britain’s economy and jobs market. Such special statistical updates aim to go beyond the now standard employment-unemployment-economic inactivity numbers and will include an additional look at other important data which provide further and fuller context to the state of Britain’s labour market.

Employment, Unemployment, Economic Inactivity and Vacancies

Since the economy started opening up after the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, we’ve become accustomed to a-now-famous statistical quartet made up for four things: employment, unemployment, economic inactivity, and vacancies. In August, we reported some concerning, but very slight, indications in these numbers that the labour market was shifting and starting to be dragged down by the very high cost of living/cost of doing business. On the back of the Bank of England raising interest rates in August, and predicting that the economy would enter a recession by the end of the year, it became clear by September that this shift was very real. This saw both the employment numbers slow whilst the rate of economic inactivity continued to rise. Below we present these four sets of data across a range of relevant timelines.

The actual number (rather than percentage) of full-time employees saw a drop during the latest three-month period. Part-time employees also saw a drop during the latest three-month period, despite steadily growing since 2021, yet the number of self-employed workers has gone up during the latest three-month period but remains much lower than prior to 2020.

Unemployment

The unemployment picture has been one of the oddities of the post-pandemic labour market as it has continued to be very low. However, as we now know very well, there is still a serious broader worklessness problem that is largely explained by the stubbornly high numbers of economically inactive citizens.

As with employment above, three sets of timelines are represented by three graphs.

The final graph above may indicate a small rise in unemployment compared to its low point in March-May. Although this must continue to be monitored, particularly with news of increases in the numbers of insolvencies and economic inactivity (below), the unemployment numbers are still historically low. The other relevant data on the unemployment front comes from unemployment by duration and the claimant count.

The first graph above represents some good news on the subject of long-term unemployment with this number now being back below where it was prior to the pandemic. We have seen a steady decline in the claimant count since 2021 although recently a very slight uptick is evident.

Economic Inactivity

As noted above, with the very high and persistent rate of economic inactivity we’ve seen since the middle of the pandemic, the alarming and pressing problem of ‘worklessness’ is now not well captured by official unemployment numbers. As we head out of a post-pandemic boom and towards an inflation-generated recession, this problematic feature of our current labour market appears to be a stubborn one.

Overlapping with this age group is the large number of people out of work due to long-term health conditions which saw a record quarterly rise and reached its highest level in at least thirty years (at 2.49 million).

The rise in those economically inactive due to long-term health conditions is particularly alarming and appears, with other shifts noted in other data, to be a particularly persistent problem. This means that as the economy enters a recession and this problem remains, employment support providers will still be needed to provide the kind of long-term support this group of people need to get back into work – a case we’ll be making going into 2023 to ministers.

Vacancies

The vacancies problem that emerged in 2021 has been as important to understanding the pandemic era  labour market as the economic inactivity problem above, and of course they are very much causally related.

The total number of vacancies stands at around 1.266 million, a little down on the record high of 1.3 million it reached in the three month period of March to May. This levelling off since March-May aligns with the other indicators that also indicate this period of 2022 is a likely watershed point in the timeline. There was a 34,000 drop from June to August this year, the largest fall on the quarter since the same period in 2020 at the height of pandemic-induced turbulence. This picture is complicated somewhat when the vacancy numbers are observed by the industrial sector. Those sectors with the largest falls in vacancy numbers were the information and communication industry, which was down 11,000 vacancies and the professional, scientific and technical activities industry, which was down 8,000 vacancies on the quarter. Human health and social work had the largest increase in vacancies, up by 7,000 on the quarter.

The Institute for Employment studies (IES) produced a more detailed and illustrative mapping of this sector-by-sector picture.

There has been rising concern for adult social care for many years, but became particularly acute during the pandemic and have seen many leave a sector already marked by high staff turnover. We must think of these problems in view of the other data above. To raise the most pressing and conjoined set of problems of the post-2020 labour market, this points to the relationship between the historically high rate of job vacancies and historically high economic inactivity rate . As with the NHS, adult social care impacts the broader economic inactivity problem beyond the perhaps narrow confines of this one sector. A survey run by the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) says that social care waiting lists have grown by 37% in less than six months. As of April, there were 542,000 people waiting for care assessments, direct payments or reviews. This is up from 396,000 in November 2021. The economics of this is simple and points to a very concerning on-going problem. This problem not only conjoins each of the employment, vacancy and economic inactivity problems we face, but one that joins both the rising health-related problems and the rising numbers of those choosing to stay out of work to look after family: if there are hundreds of thousands of people waiting for care, care payments or care reviews, the caring responsibilities will fall to family members who will not be freed up to take up work. This is a complex and multi-layered problem and one that needs expert and targeted support. Public policy needs to reflect this reality and the solutions that are available.To raise one promising example of support that should be fostered by government, we know of social enterprise and local government sector providers that target young care leavers so that they can be supported into work in the adult care sector. This, beyond simultaneously addressing pressing vacancy and economic inactivity problems, has the added benefit of offering opportunities for training and work for a very vulnerable segment of the unemployed people in between the ages 16 and 24, and in particular the highly vulnerable 16-17 year olds.  Such work can be expanded and prioritised by national policy-makers as well as coordinated by local policy-makers found in local and combined authorities.

Regional level

The ONS reported the following data for the different regions and nations of the UK. For the three months ending in August 2022, the highest employment rate estimate in the UK was in the East of England (79.1%) and the lowest was in Northern Ireland (69.9%). The largest increase in the employment rate compared with the same period last year was in Yorkshire and the Humber (1.7%) while Wales saw the largest decrease of 1.9%. Up to August 2022, the highest unemployment rate estimate was found in the West Midlands (4.7%) and the lowest was in the South West (2.7%). There were record lows reported for London (4.0%) and the North East (4.4%), while the North West (3.5%) posted a joint record low.

For the three months ending August 2022, the highest economic inactivity rate in the UK was in Northern Ireland (27.8%) and the lowest was in the East of England (18.5%); the same region that boasted the highest employment rate above. Wales saw the largest increase in the inactivity rate compared with the same period last year, up 2.6 percentage points, with Yorkshire and The Humber seeing the largest decrease of 1.1 percentage points.

The sharp drop in the employment rate in Wales and its sharp rise in economic inactivity should alarm policy-makers in Cardiff and London.

Insolvencies and Redundancies

In September, it was reported in the Guardian that Insolvencies had jumped by 43% in England and Wales. By this month, the Guardian reported a further rise which constituted a 13-year high.  At some point, this will filter down into unemployment and/or economic inactivity numbers.

Redundancies

The word redundancies sends a chill down the spine of any labour market analyst not to mention, of course, the prospect therein for any employed person. As the economy creeps then lurches toward a recession, we must start to look at the redundancy level as well as those other measures above.

The March to May quarter has started to emerge as a key data point in the time series, meaning it is at this point when things started to shift south in the labour market. The same is once again true with the rate of redundancies. The below tables drawn from ONS data, and the latter 2022 focused graph in particular, point to a slight but clear shift upward.

These are of course raw numbers and not percentages, but the upward trend line is notable and should be observed as we approach 2023. To draw a broader contextual picture, we must look at this alongside insolvencies data.

Insolvencies

Insolvencies data is being introduced here as it doesn’t feature in the updates provided by others like the IES and Learning & Work Institute and, as the economy heads towards a recession, it becomes a useful contextual device to try and understand problems such as unemployment rises, economic inactivity, claimant count numbers, and of course redundancies above. As noted above, reports of rising redundancies have appeared in the mainstream media. The ONS reports the following data:

• Total company insolvencies in England and Wales in the second quarter of 2022 reached their highest quarterly level since July to September 2009, driven by Creditors’ Voluntary Liquidations (CVLs).
• More than 1 in 10 UK businesses reported a moderate-to-severe risk of insolvency in August 2022.
• During the same period, 22% of businesses said energy prices were their main concern, which is an increase from 15% in late February 2022; in firms with 10 to 49 employees, the figure was 30%.
• In England and Wales, construction, manufacturing, accommodation and food service activities, and wholesale and retail trade industries together accounted for more than half of total business insolvencies in the first half of 2022.

This longer run time-series clearly marks out the effects of the financial crisis in 2009, the effects of the government support provisions like the furlough scheme that shielded companies from insolvencies in 2020, and the sharp rise we are now seeing in 2022.

We look to provide more assessment of these labour market trends as data is released and we learn more about our changing state of work and jobseeking in the UK. Such assessments will complement the core of ERSA’s work championing the role of the employment support sector and those public policy programmes that support this work.

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There is a view that ‘official’ unemployment rates mask a substantial hidden unemployment according to researchers from Sheffield Hallam University. They argue that the substantial increase in economically inactive and those claiming long term health benefits should be viewed as comprising a rising number of long term unemployed.[1] A large proportion of this cohort, with the appropriate health, training, and childcare support, could be able to access available jobs.

There are therefore calls for a back-to-work strategy involving a Job Guarantee for young people and the long-term unemployed which also involves pathways to vocational training.[2] Job Rotation (JR) can play a crucial role in such a strategy, linking a range of tried and tested employability support (including pre-employment training and coaching), lifelong learning and in-work support. Evaluations show a high rate of job retention – around 75% of unemployed JR participants gain permanent jobs.[3] More important the model plays a crucial role in upskilling the economy.

With the phasing out of the Job Retention Scheme and the Kickstart programme, this is a particularly opportune time to be thinking about Job Rotation. Is it an idea whose time has come?

What is Job Rotation?

The model enables employees to be released from work to undertake study, by replacing them with substitutes who have been unemployed. Through this model, those otherwise excluded from the workforce, are given a unique opportunity for paid work experience and vocational training. Employers benefit because production continues while staff are freed up to develop their skills. This model has been mainstreamed in some European countries, and successfully piloted in Scotland. An essential ingredient of the JR model is the role of social dialogue and the bringing together of relevant labour market partners, including trade unions and worker representatives.

There is a resurgence of JR initiatives in Denmark[4] promoted by the Government, trade unions and Danish local government association (KL). There have also been small-scale initiatives in the UK.[5]

How does JR work?

The JR process is based on a seamless rotation model comprised of:

• Identifying the training needs of low-skilled workers in a participating organisation. Unemployed ‘substitutes’ can free up workers for training without the organisation losing production/service delivery. This involves a team made up of employers, employment and skills services and workers/unemployed representatives -usually the trade unions.
• Unemployed individuals are targeted to apply for JR jobs. Unemployment benefits are topped up so they work for the agreed rate for the job, usually at the Living Wage.
• Unemployed individuals receive pre-employment and in-work mentoring (this could be performed by Work Coaches in Jobcentres or provider caseworkers), as well as access to vocational courses.
• Workers in participant organisations can access apprenticeships and Apprenticeship Levy.

How could it be funded?

There is no hard and fast prescribed model but it generally involves:

• Budget for a wage subsidy (benefit with top-up to make up to the Living Wage for unemployed substitutes) which can involve some matching fund by employers
• Budget for pre-employment mentoring and training
• Budget for in-work training for unemployed substitutes
• Budget for vocational training for existing employees

This could involve packaging funds from a range of sources (e.g. employment programmes, Universal Credit, the Apprenticeship Levy and LEP-matched funds).

What are the benefits of Job Rotation?

(1) JR meets three separate but inter-related needs of local economies: tackling unemployment, addressing skills shortages, encouraging business development through staff training and learning and the promotion of Lifelong Learning.

 (2) JR helps disadvantaged labour market groups by providing a period of paid work placement, along with the opportunity to improve their vocational skills and qualifications.

(3) Employers reap the benefits of enhanced training for existing employees, and the enhanced capabilities of future employees, improving their retention, reducing turnover and saving costs to their business.

We know that it’s difficult to engage employers/businesses in programmes, largely due to the number and complexity of programmes[6]. The JR model is effective and efficient in reaching its target groups and reduces the potential for programme duplication and employers being approached by multiple providers.[7]

A number of smaller businesses could be connected to secure volume in the JR activity, allowing the development of bespoke courses for employees from the different companies. This is already a tried and tested approach in the employability sector that improves employer engagement. For example, in Health and Social Care, JR could provide career routes for low-skilled workers without loss of staffing cover for essential services.

There is scope for Combined Authorities and City Regions to pilot and test this model in local and regional labour markets in the UK, with potential for scalability. JR provides opportunities for unemployed people and upskills existing employees. It can be applied in both public and private sectors and could be particularly useful for sectors or businesses who struggle to recruit and could be a solution to the UK’s long-lamented under-skilled labour market.

[1] Beatty C and Fothergill S (2022) The Real Level of Unemployment 2022: The Myth of Full Employment across Britain, Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University

[2] https://learningandwork.org.uk/news-and-policy/act-now-to-tackle-record-rise-in-unemployment-and-prevent-long-term-damage/

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.myiep.uk/resource/resmgr/docs/employment_response_to_coron.pdf

https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/new-plan-jobs-why-we-need-new-jobs-guarantee

[3] Kruhøffer J (2007) Job Rotation in Europe as the Feasibility environment for the Jobrotation e-Service, Berlin AOF

[4] https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/emcc/erm/support-instrument/ob-rotation

[5] Etherington D (2008) A strategy for an inclusive labour market, Feasibility Study for a Job Rotation Pilot for Incapacity Benefit Claimants in Ealing, Report to Ealing Primary Care NHS Mental Health Trust, London, Middlesex University

[6] https://business.leeds.ac.uk/downloads/download/91/ceric_-_employer_engagement_in_active_labour_market_programmes_in_the_uk_and_denmark_final_report

[7] https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.myiep.uk/resource/resmgr/docs/iep_journal_issue_1_-_june_2.pdf

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This note will look that the emerging economic policy context within which employment support will have to operate over the next few years. Understanding an economic context marked by high inflation, the cost of living crisis that results and a labour market weighed down by very high vacancies will be important for an employment support sector. In historical terms, the economic problems we’re looking at coming out of a pandemic are also quite unusual, some of these problems however that will become more familiar as the prospects of a new recession become much more real. This will be particularly apparent as the government borrowing binge of the pandemic pushes us towards a familiar political context defined by a politics of debt reduction. As we all remember, amidst the wreckage of the 2008 financial crisis economic policy goals in the UK were framed so tightly around the need to service high levels of public debt (which rose sharply to prop up a collapsing banking sector) that nearly all other policy areas drawn into the same agenda. To reduce the cost to the public purse, employment policy, welfare policy and broader public services all suffered either direct (and huge) cuts in spending or, in the case of welfare, a concerted campaign to push unemployed people off welfare (into jobs, education or, simply, wherever).

At the moment, economic policy makers are losing sleep about inflation rather than a problem public debt, but given the level of spending and borrowing that had to be undertaken since March 2022, we should certainly expect the servicing of public debt to re-emerge as driving force economic policy. What could make the next recession even worse is if rampant inflation and its effects do not relent by the time central banks like the Bank of England, economic policy-makers and other power brokers like the bond markets decide fiscal retrenchment is a good idea once again. This prospects of this double-headed monster is very real.

This note will map these issues out but will make this point clear: the case for targeted and extensive employment support and a strong employment support sector is as critical as it has ever been. This support however requires financial as well as organisational assistance that will not helped if this double-headed monster emerges this year or next.

Economic policy-making and good employment policy

The health of the labour market – employment, productivity, wages – are clearly important to macroeconomic policy-makers. As the not-too-distant-example of the financial crisis demonstrates however, it’s not necessarily going to be top of the list of priorities. Back in 2008, it was public debt that was the driving force behind economic policy. At the moment it is inflation.

It is necessary first to note that, when we refer to ‘policy-makers’ in this context, we include not only government ministers, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer in particular, but also central bankers – and in Britain’s case the Governor and Monetary Policy Board (MPC) of the Bank of England (BoE). Inflation is the central concern of monetary policy, whilst taxing and spending defines fiscal policy. Although clearly connected, they do not necessarily move in tandem nor coherently. The BoE however is the entity that, in practice, interacts with the bond market to secure financing for government spending should planned spending exceed available tax receipts. With this in mind, the BoE clearly has an interest in the state of domestic fiscal policy. At the moment however, like other central banks like the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve, the BoE is most concerned with the rate of inflation and how it can use its main policy lever– interest rates – to tackle it. The negative effect inflation has on interest paid on government debt however presents a source of BoE pressure on the Treasury and its spending plans.

Central bankers have tended adhere to orthodox macroeconomic principles identified with “sound money”, which is why when they’re given the opportunity to obsess about inflation they usually take it. This is not to say inflation is currently not a problem (it clearly is), only that as a question of emphasis this concern can lead to skewed priorities which has not historically boded well for advocates of comprehensive or ‘full’ employment policies. So in this sense, ‘sound money’ sees approaches to macroeconomic management rely on concepts that are more interested in the price level than with full employment. This produces a reliance on economic concepts such as the Philips curve and the ‘non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment’ or ‘NAIRU’. The NAIRU operates upon the idea that there is a ‘natural rate’ of (un)employment and that policy attempts to raise employment above (and lower unemployment below) this rate will generate inflation. As a result, the dominance of devices like the NAIRU have rarely been helpful for integrating ambitious employment policy into macroeconomic policy agendas form the 1970s onwards. In tandem with restrictive inflation targeting, this was always going to affect the long-term unemployed, and those vulnerable to it the most, as it made it harder to advocate and fund policies and services to help them.

This focus on such principles has had another consequence which the pandemic era economic context has laid bare: the relationship between the employment level and vacancies. The record high number of vacancies we began to see since mid-2021 has demanded policy-makers become reacquainted with the Beveridge curve, a concept that for most of the last 50-60 years has sat in the shadow of the more famous ‘Phillips curve’. In 1989, notable macroeconomist Olivier Blanchard and colleague Peter Diamond made this point below, one which has renewed relevance now.

“macroeconomists thinking about aggregate labour market dynamics have organized their thoughts around two relations, the Phillips curve and the Beveridge curve. The Beveridge curve, the relation between unemployment and vacancies, has very much played second fiddle. We think that emphasis is wrong. The Beveridge relation comes conceptually first and contains essential information about the functioning of the labour market and the shocks that affect it.”

Blanchard and Diamond (1989) 

There is no one single ‘big lesson’ for economic management post-pandemic, but several. One of them however must be that a stubborn disconnect between employment level and high number vacancies needs targeted policy intervention and support. This will require macro-economic policy-makers in the BoE and the Treasury to see that part of the inflation problem lies in a labour market and a wage-price spiral which is already looking menacingly difficult to control (due to other factors like energy prices and the supply chain crunch).

“these issues [won’t] go away on their own, and the longer we hold off taking action to address them the greater the problems for employers, for our recovery from the pandemic, and for those out of work…So we need a new Plan for Participation, that will extend our public employment services and support to all of those who are out of work and want help”

The Institute for Employment Studies, Labour Market Update December 2021.

If high vacancy rates aren’t being addressed because of high barriers for parts of the unemployed population (i.e. health concerns, care support) then this needs targeted policy support to be addressed. If high vacancy rates aren’t being addressed because of wide skills mismatch then this needs targeted policy support to also be made available and funded. It will involve joined up thinking however, one that can combine employment policy, education and skills, health, welfare as well as economic policy.

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‘Way to Work’ – why ‘half a million get jobs in under six months’ is either woefully poor, meaningless or plain wrong… a story in six charts!

Lessons include: flows are huge, especially now; and we need more transparent data/ better targets

• First, this shows why 500k finding work every six months really isn’t special. Here’s *known* exits to work from Jobseeker’s Allowance (which Universal Credit replaced), over rolling six month periods 1998-2015. Barely ever below 500k, and always a lot higher after recessions.
  
• Importantly though, above graph under-estimates flows into work, as loads of people weren’t followed up and so were ‘failed to sign’ or ‘not known’ (left below). Including these would give implausibly large figures (right below), so the truth will be somewhere in between. Luckily…
  
  
• DWP did research in 2011 to understand these discrepancies https://gov.uk/government/publications/destinations-of-jobseekers-allowance-income-support-and-employment-and-supportallowance-leavers-2011-rr791… and estimated that 68% of off-flows went into work. And if you apply that percentage to total off-flows, you get this – i.e. never below 500k, and often substantially above.
• The above charts all stop at 2015 because: 1. UC had started to roll out and 2. JSA volumes were falling fast And the numbers overall really matter, as 500k is a volume target. 500k when there’s lots on UC/ JSA is far less ambitious than 500k when there aren’t. To illustrate…
  
  
• This shows the *proportion* of JSA claimants known to have moved into work every month. Typically 8-10% and often higher (and this will be an under-estimate). ‘Way to Work’, by comparison, assumed just 5% of ‘Searching for Work’ group would find work each month (i.e. 83k of 1.6m)
  
• So lots of graphs but what are the lessons? 1. Flows are probably higher than people realise, and especially high now 2. 500k wasn’t really explained at the time, and very unambitious as a ‘flows’ target 3. We need better data on flows, incl the data behind the press release 4. And we need to be honest that the *additional* impact of employment support is far smaller than big headlines like this. So we need to communicate better, evaluate programmes properly, celebrate those small differences and try to improve them. Final point is that…
• t’s well possible that DWP’s 500k estimate is wrong! H/T @Stephen_EvansUK, who shows that off-flows from ‘Searching for Work were well over 2 MILLION – so either 500k to work is implausibly low, or off-flows to other destinations are implausibly high.

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Some lead local authorities have been incredibly proactive since the launch of the prospectus when liaising with local stakeholders, however, some have unfortunately not been as effective. As ERSA has recommended many times before, our members should contact their local lead authorities and offer to help with their investment plans.

The next couple of weeks will be the last time to influence submission plans and get access to the replacement of European funding, this is particularly important if your ESF-funded projects end before 2024 and you are entitled to the voluntary sector considerations.

ERSA has collected some of the documents that have been sent out by lead local authorities for local stakeholders to fill out. We have subsequently made our own template for organisations to fill out and send to their contacts at their lead authorities as a final push before the submission window opens.

Download or view the template here  UKSPF Project Ideas Template

If you have any further enquiries, please contact policy@ersa.org.uk.

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