Collaboration required to 'tackle youth unemployment'

More collaboration is needed between enterprises and educational establishments in tackling youth unemployment, City & Guilds has suggested. According to the organisation's chief executive Chris Jones, jobless youngsters comprise a group that are often easily forgotten by society. The number of so-called NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) remains critically high according to latest ONS Labour Statistics, despite the fact that overall unemployment is down.

Resultantly, Mr Jones has expressed concern that not enough is being done to help these young people to acquire the skills they need to enter and remain in the jobs market in a sustainable and long-lasting way. It suggested that employers and educators must work together with the government to build more bridges between schools, colleges and businesses.

Welcoming the figures showing more people in total are employed in the UK now than last year, he warned that it is important not to forget about the 853,000 young people still without work. While this number has fallen slightly, he said it is still unacceptably high.

"We know that many of these young people just want to get a foot on the career ladder, sending out hundreds of CVs without success. This can be soul destroying and of course the young unemployed often go on to become the long-term unemployed. That's bad for them and for our economy," the City & Guilds head said.

In order to ensure that more job vacancies are being created and filled, he concluded that work must be done to ensure young adults are equipped with the skills that businesses need. "But that can only happen when employers, educators and government work together to provide young people with access to the right skills, education and genuinely relevant careers advice," he added.

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