The youth unemployment rate rose relatively rapidly in the recession that began in 2008, from 9% on average in 2007 to a peak of 31.2% in June 2012. Since then, the seasonally adjusted youth unemployment rate has fallen steadily to 20.6% as of September 2015, reflecting the impact of government policy and the overall improvement in the labour market.
The share of youth not in employment, education or in training is driven largely by the level of unemployment, so this figure also rose significantly in the recession, to a level of close to 19% in each of the years 2010-2012. It has also fallen in line with the fall in youth unemployment – to 15% in 2014 as noted in the question – and continues to fall.
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. 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 unemployed jobseekers and, in accordance with the EU Council Recommendation for a Youth Guarantee, by young jobseekers in particular. This is the rationale behind the Government’s Pathways to Work strategy and the Youth Guarantee implementation plan.
As, under services such as Intreo, Youthreach, VTOS, PLC programmes, and JobBridge, Ireland already had many of the recommended component parts of a Youth Guarantee, the main plank in Ireland is to prioritise access to these existing supports for young people, who become unemployed, with the objective of ensuring that they have an opportunity for employment, further education or work experience within the recommended period of four months as per the EU council recommendation.
In this regard our first intervention is to provide case officer support to help newly unemployed young people find and secure sustainable jobs. Accordingly operating processes have been refined in each of our regions to prioritise the early engagement of young people through Intreo to ensure that all young people receive expert advice and have access to progression options. In addition as part of our commitment to engage with 100,000 long-term unemployed people through the Intreo/JobPath process during 2015 we prioritised engagement with the c 13,000 young people who are already long term unemployed. In implementing these processes DSP making extensive use of the services of Local Employment Services and Job Clubs.
For those who do not find employment through the process just described, additional offers are provided for. Most such offers (over 70%) are in existing further education or training programmes. Others are in existing community-based employment programmes such as CE, Gateway and Tús. Overall, over 23,300 opportunities were taken up on the relevant programmes in 2014 and a similar number is expected to be taken up in 2015.
In addition we have introduced new programmes specifically for young people including JobsPlus youth – an employment subsidy for unemployed people under 25 years of age which is payable after four months of unemployment, and First Steps – a work experience programme for very disadvantaged young people.
The continued roll-out of the Intreo activation model in conjunction with the implementation of these specific measures for youth will further assist young people to make the transition to the labour market. This, together with the forecast further improvement in the economy and employment, should support further substantial decreases in youth unemployment, and in the number of young people not in employment, education or in training.
