Former Labour prime minister’s proposal part of plan to prevent youth unemployment.

Gordon Brown calls for £100-a-week wage subsidy to help hire under-25s.

The former prime minister Gordon Brown has called for employers to be given a wage subsidy of £100 a week to hire workers under 25 as part of a plan to prevent youth unemployment exceeding levels seen in the 1980s.

Brown said 1.5 million young people would need help to find work over the next year, adding the government’s £2bn ”kickstart” scheme announced in the summer would not be sufficient.

In his summer mini-budget, Rishi Sunak announced a £2bn plan to finance 350,000 six-month work placements for the under-25s, saying: “Young people bear the brunt of most economic crises, but they are at particular risk this time because they work in the sectors disproportionately hit by the pandemic.

“We also know that youth unemployment has a long-term impact on jobs and wages and we don’t want to see that happen to this generation.”

Brown said the government’s scheme would not provide high-quality work experience and only help those who had been out of work for six months and were on universal credit.

The former prime minister said the elements of a plan to to prevent youth unemployment should include:

• Provision of quality work experience.
• Training geared to new jobs, in sectors such as care, IT and logistics, jobs linked to the recovery from lab technicians and contact tracers, to care workers and teaching assistants, not training for continued unemployment.
• Help with job searches – which Brown said were a vital element of getting into work, as demonstrated by Labour’s 2009 future jobs fund.
• A wage subsidy for employers in the order of £100 a week for six months to take a young person on full-time.

Source: The Gaurdian