The official measures of employment, unemployment and labour force participation are sourced from the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS). These measures are collected in line with practice throughout the EU, and are internationally comparable and robust. Reflecting the improvement in the labour market, youth unemployment continues to fall. For example, the seasonally adjusted youth unemployment rate in Ireland as estimated by Eurostat was 21.6% in December 2014 as compared to 30.8% in December 2011.
The Government’s primary strategy to tackle youth unemployment is through policies to create the environment for a strong economic recovery by promoting competitiveness and productivity. Economic recovery will underpin jobs growth and the availability of productive employment for young people. This strategy has been succeeding, with an increase of over 80,000 in employment over the last two years.
However, the Government recognises that as the recovery takes hold, there is a need for additional measures to ensure that as many as possible of the jobs created are taken up by jobseekers and by young jobseekers in particular. This is the rationale behind the Government’s Pathways to Work strategy and the Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan.
As noted in the Implementation Plan, the vast majority of young people who are not in employment, education or training are identified as unemployed and registered with the Department of Social Protection.
The Youth Guarantee sets a medium-term objective of ensuring that such young people receive an offer of employment within four months of becoming unemployed. This will be delivered by changing the activation process to ensure that young people benefit from earlier and more frequent engagement with case officers, by earmarking places on existing employment and training programmes for young people and by introducing some new programmes such as FirstSteps and JobPlus Youth. FirstSteps aims to offer young people you are particularly distant from the labour market a work experience opportunity with sponsor employers. In line with the Youth Guarantee commitment, JobsPlus Youth offers employers who recruit a young person under 25 years of age who was unemployed for four months or more a subsidy of up to €416 per month. The duration unemployed threshold for other age cohorts is 12 months.
The department is also responsible for referring clients to further education and training (FET) and related programmes. My colleagues in the Department of Education and Skills have responsibility for these programmes.
The primary intent of all activation policies, including for the young unemployed, is on assistance in finding suitable employment. Where this is not possible in the short term, ensuring that participants have transferrable employability skills is a key focus of all programmes to which young people are referred.
