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LEON HAWTHORNE: The search for a job begins here.
After all it can't be more than a short distance away. The economy is
booming and if you're keen and eager to learn the right skills, all options
are open. Well, that's the theory behind the government's New Deal for
the young, long term unemployed. Not everyone seems convinced. They say
despite the fancy decor at job centres these days the New Deal is all hype
and empty promises.
JESSICA DUNN: It felt like a waste of time
all the time I was on it because I knew there was no job at the end there
was no job prospects at the end.
THERESA MAY MP: The New Deal has been an
expensive failure for the government. It has failed the unemployed. It
has failed businesses and it has failed the taxpayer.
DEREK FOSTER MP: The economy's doing well. The
government is doing well in getting national unemployment down but there
is still a lot of pockets where there are just not enough jobs and that
does effect the performance of the New Deal obviously.
HAWTHORNE: Sheffield is one of those unemployment
black spots. The city's stylish Continental look disguises the fact that
forty thousand manufacturing jobs have evaporated since the 1980s. A generation
of young people here has seen traditional jobs swept away.
Sheffield is one of the
cities chosen to spearhead the New Deal and Town Hall, behind me, is the
former political power base of Employment Secretary David Blunkett. So
this is a good place to come to see how the New Deal really is working.
The political stakes for the government are high. They promised New Deal
would significantly cut youth unemployment and that means the scheme will
be judged on exactly how many jobs it's created and at what price.
Twenty year old Razwana
Kousar is on the New Deal, getting trained to be a seamstress with R.J.
Stokes, a large family business in Sheffield. The government pays the company
a subsidy of sixty pounds a week to employ and train her for six months.
RAZWANA KOUSAR: I've been on for thirteen weeks
and so far I've learned quite a few things. I've made curtains, I've made
cushion covers and pelmets. I think it's been really good for me. It's
really helped me find the right job. It's given me the right training
which I will need.
HAWTHORNE: Obviously, the New Deal has
worked for some, but what of the overall national picture? In its first
full year, beginning April 1998, just over a quarter of a million young
people completed the New Deal.
Of those, 43% ended up
with a long term proper job, with the wages fully paid by the employer.
However, of all the New Deal graduates, 12% went straight back onto other
benefits at the end of it all. Another 27% of those going through the
programme simply disappeared with the Employment Service having no idea
what happened to them. And the remaining 18% went elsewhere, some went
to prison but most went onto other training schemes.
So, statistically Razwana
has a four in ten chance of getting a real job at the end of her training.
The government claims a hundred and seventy thousand young people have
got jobs through the New Deal. But critics say this is statistical sleight
of hand.
MAY: Well the government
makes a number of grandiose claims about the success of the New Deal, but
those claims frankly don't stack up against the evidence of their own figures.
When they claim the numbers that they're getting into the New Deal, about
a quarter of those are people who have gone into very short term jobs and
then gone back into unemployment. So for them the New Deal hasn't worked
at all.
GARY YOUNG: Well of all the people who've
been through the New Deal programme, we reckon about half of them would
have got jobs anyway, just as a result of general economic fluctuations
in the labour market. Now, if you take the number and try to estimate the
number at any point in time of people who are actually in work now, who
wouldn't have been in work without the New Deal we estimate that's about
fifteen thousand people. So, the New Deal has added about fifteen thousand
jobs to the economy.
HAWTHORNE: So although many young people
have been through the New Deal and got jobs, the scheme itself is directly
responsible for creating only a small amount of extra employment. But how
much has each of these extra jobs cost?
YOUNG: Well last year the government
spent two hundred and ten million pounds on the New Deal programme. Now
if you take account of the fact that extra economic activity has been generated
by the programme because people have got jobs and so on, the overall outflow
from the Exchequer is much smaller than that, about a hundred million pounds.
Now with fifteen thousand jobs created by the programme, that leaves us
with a cost per job of about six thousand to seven thousand pounds.
HAWTHORNE: But the taxpayer saves some
money because a quarter of those contacted to join the New Deal drop out
and stop claiming benefit and Sheffield contributes disproportionately
to the almost seventy thousand young people who disappear without trace
when invited to board the New Deal bandwagon.
PAUL CONVERY: There is still a significant
number of young people, about a quarter or so come into the New Deal, who
leave the system and the government doesn't quite know where they've gone.
Now, research that's tried to investigate these destinations suggest that
something like two thirds go into jobs, although it seems that in a lot
of cases they don't keep those jobs for a particularly long period of time.
HAWTHORNE: Those young people that don't
disappear have to visit the local job centre for some career counselling.
All the options are spelt out in detail by an Employment Service that's
rapidly changing its menacing image to something more colourful and user
friendly.
New Deal clients get one-on-one
attention from a personal adviser who tries to arrange the right job training
or educational programme. The idea is to equip people with the skills needed
for the jobs market. But there's concern among some employers about the
size of what's called the skills gap. They complain many of those on the
New Deal lack basic educational or personal skills.
KEITH DANIELS: Many of the New Deal clients
do have very difficult personal histories, either they've suffered through
poor education, or they've perhaps even been in the criminal justice system,
or they are lacking in personal skills and qualities that most employers
would like to see. The subsidy is helpful to an employer but it isn't necessarily
sufficient to bridge the gap between the skills problems that the individuals
have got and what other applicants in the labour market offer.
CONVERY: Well, the young unemployed
population by and large is pretty low skilled, hasn't done a great deal
of work, has perhaps moved from one precarious job to another, really
pretty dislocated from the labour market. Of that, 40% are virtually illiterate
and in-numerate and about 63/64% don't have what's called NVQ Level 2 -
the basic entry level qualification requirement of most employers. Now
that's quite a series of obstacles for those young people to get over.
HAWTHORNE: Twenty-two year olds, Matt and
Andy, have fewer objects in their path to employment. They're both college
graduates who have chosen to chance their arm on the New Deal's environmental
task force, one option if you can't get a job placement. Research at Sheffield
University shows the New Deal works very well for better educated people
like them.
ANKIE HOOGVELT: We found that in Sheffield
a third of the young people who go through New Deal end up with jobs six
months after New Deal. We found in our own research that the third that
was in jobs came from socio-economic backgrounds and from educational backgrounds
that would have predisposed them for this. In other words, they came from
good middle class backgrounds. And so one might argue that the New Deal
has actually not had any impact on those for whom it was designed, namely
those who didn't have the qualifications and the backgrounds to get jobs.
HAWTHORNE: I met a group of three young
people who have been on the New Deal in Sheffield. Unlike the college graduates
on the environmental project, they have fewer formal qualifications and
are not optimistic about their job prospects.
All the training that
some people get on the New Deal, does it actually help them get a job at
the end of it?
JESSICA DUNN: I think, the thing is the
job has to be there in the first place. A lot of people doing training
and there aren't the jobs for the amount of people who are doing the training
and because it's so competitive in the North because there aren't very
many jobs, people who are doing training are doing a lot of training and
then there's always someone more qualified or with more experience and
obviously you can't get experience at something unless somebody gives you
that first chance.
HAWTHORNE: Craig, what kind of work have
you been doing on the New Deal and what do you think of it?
CRAIG HOUSON: Just chopping tress down,
digging paths, paving and a few other things. I don't like it at all.
HAWTHORNE: Do you think you get enough
money for doing that?
HOUSON: No. I get �80 on my Giro
and I'm still getting that now.
DUNN: It's basically working for
your dole isn't it.
HOUSON: Basically you get out of
bed five days a week for nowt.
HAWTHORNE: Ian, tell me about the training
that you've been doing and has there been a job for you at the end.
IAN FLETCHER: The training's been fine,
it's when you go out and try to apply for jobs. You apply for jobs: 'oh
you haven't got the experience or you've got the right experience but you
ain't got the qualifications. It's a Catch 22 basically.
HAWTHORNE: The South Yorkshire Forum is
a community organisation that's trying to solve the problem of unemployment
in Sheffield. They're briefing a team of MPs from the Employment Select
Committee on efforts to revitalise the local economy. The city's just been
granted Objective One status. That means it qualifies for aid from the
European Union to help create new jobs to replace those lost in the manufacturing
sector.
FOSTER: All kinds of barriers in
an area like Sheffield and South Yorkshire which has lost a huge amount
of jobs in recent years in iron, steel and the coal mining industry. They
have got to reinvent themselves as a region and it's no good some of us
longing for those jobs to come back, they never will, that is the past.
You've got to get into those areas of rapidly growing industrial and commercial
sectors.
HAWTHORNE: But the lack of jobs in Sheffield
is the main reason why New Dealers still can't find work. Indeed, the Employment
Service's own league table ranks the city one hundred and twenty four out
of one hundred and forty four in terms of getting jobs for people on the
New Deal.
FOSTER: Well the New Deal is an
exemplar of the government's approach with trying to get people more ready
to take the jobs which are being created and I wholly support that and
it's working reasonably well. But what you've got to do alongside that
in areas like this is also create more jobs.
HOOGVELT: Even if the New Deal
was the best possible scheme in the world, it might still not have the
result that is required because we don't have the jobs here and we are
very unlikely to get them. Sheffield cannot make up for the loss of jobs
suffered in the 1980s, not in this globalised new economy that is emerging.
HAWTHORNE: So the evidence from Sheffield
is that the better educated benefit most from the New Deal. The government's
flagship policy does little to improve the job prospects of a hardcore
of the young, unskilled unemployed. And if a city's local economy is in
decline and jobs are scarce the New Deal can't, in itself, offer the youth
a bright future.
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