Research Briefing
Published Friday, 11 December, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has had, and will continue to have, a substantial impact on the UK labour market. This briefing provides information on the measures that are being put in place to get people back in to work.
Coronavirus: Getting people back into work (160 KB, PDF)
Download full reportDownload ‘Coronavirus: Getting people back into work’ report (160 KB, PDF)
This briefing was last updated on 11 December 2020. The Library intends to update this briefing but please be aware that information may have changed since the date of publication.
The coronavirus pandemic has had, and will continue to have, a substantial impact on the UK labour market. The evolving impact is tracked in the library paper Coronavirus: Impact on the labour market.
By September 2020, employment levels had fallen by around half a million people from levels prior to the pandemic, while unemployment levels had risen by around 250,000. The OBR has projected a rise in unemployment of 800,000 in the second quarter of 2020, following the end of the Coronavirus Job Retention scheme, peaking at a total of 2.6 million.
The Government has put in place various initiatives over recent months aimed at getting people back into employment:
The Government has reported that it will provide labour market support worth £2.6 billion in 2021-22.
The library paper Coronavirus: Support for businesses provides information on the support that is currently available to businesses to support them to keep their employees in work.
The Kickstart scheme provides funding to employers who create new jobs for young people. As of 26 November 2020, almost 24,000 vacancies had been approved.
Employers were able to apply for the scheme from the 2 September. Employers will be able to take on individuals until the end of December 2021.
The scheme intends to create “hundreds of thousands” of 6-month work placements. The scheme is intended to provide work placements for young people aged 16-24 who are on Universal Credit and who are at risk of long term unemployment.
The scheme will pay employers to create new jobs for these young people, and funding will be conditional on the employer proving that these jobs are new, and are not replacing jobs held by staff who have recently been made redundant. The jobs created must provide a minimum of 25 hours per week, for 6 months.
The Government will provide funding to cover the National Minimum Wage for 25 hours a week for six months if employers meet these conditions. It will also provide up to £1,500 per job placement to cover setup costs, support and training.
Applications for Kickstart grants must be for a minimum of 30 job placements. If an organisation is not able to offer this many placements, then they would need to partner with other organisations to reach this number.
An initial £2 billion has been provided for this scheme, and there will not be a cap on the number of places available. The £2 billion is intended to provide funding for over 250,000 Kickstart jobs.
As part of the 2020 Spending Review, the Government announced the Restart programme. The programme will provide “intensive and tailored support to over 1 million unemployed people”.
The 3-year programme will provide £2.9 billion of funding, with around £400 million of funding in 2021-22.
The programme will go live in Summer 2021, and the commercial process will begin in December with contracts awarded in Spring 2021.
As of 8 December 2020, further details on this scheme had not yet been announced.
On the 29 September 2020, the Prime Minister announced the Lifetime Skills Guarantee. Under this guarantee, from April 2021, adults without an A-level or equivalent qualification will be offered a fully-funded college course. The courses that someone will be able to study will be limited to those that are “valued by employers”.
The list of qualifications included were published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency in December 2020. Almost 400 courses are available and a list of the subject areas that have been included have been published in the DfE’s National Skills Fund guidance.
The guarantee will be available from April in England, and will be paid for through the £2.5 billion National Skills Fund. It was announced at the November 2020 Spending Review that £375 million would be invested from this Fund in 2021-22, which included £95 million in funding for the Lifetime Skills Guarantee.
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