Legal News
Billion Pound Scheme to Aid Young Jobless (28 November 2011)
Date: 28/11/2011
Nick Clegg has told of how a £1 billion scheme will help to create subsidised training placements to provide the young jobless with hope for the future. The youth contract scheme is set to provide employers with subsidies worth £2,275 to enable them to employ 160,000 18 to 24-year-olds for six months over the course of three years. The scheme follows youth unemployment figures recently reaching 1.02 million. Mr Clegg claimed that a number of savings would pay for the Government initiative.
The new scheme, which is set to be introduced in April, aims to provide help to young people wishing to enter into a variety of employment sectors. The scheme will create up to 400,000 work placements across England, Wales and Scotland by providing employers with wage incentives that are equivalent to half the national minimum wage.
The scheme proposes to provide a further 250,000 young people with work experience placements of up to eight weeks in duration. These short-term work placements will be made available to every jobless young person who has been actively looking for work for a total of three months or greater. A £50m programme, designed to target the 25,000 most disadvantaged jobless young people in England, is set to introduce these individuals into an apprenticeship or full-time work. Companies in England will be offered additional incentive payments to create apprenticeships for unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds and job centres will receive additional funding to provide young people with the extra support they require.
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