It recognises that significant financial commitments have been made to create and protect jobs but says that the lack of targeting may make the measures less effective and that the Government has not given enough focus to keeping young people in jobs, especially in hard hit sectors.

Peter Cheese, chief executive at the CIPD, said:

On the £2bn kickstart scheme:

“The £2bn kickstart fund is a bold measure to help get young people into work but employer engagement will prove critical. Similar schemes in the past have floundered as employer pick up was low or largely limited to low-paid opportunities in the public or charitable sectors. This scheme may face similar difficulties if it fails to engage with the private sector, especially at a local level. The Government will need to draw on local partnerships and networks to make it work for young people and small employers in particular.”

On job support and lifelong learning:

“There also needs to be strong support to help young people prepare for what happens after the scheme is finished as it is not an automatic free-pass to a permanent role in six months’ time. The pledge to double the number of work coaches will help to a point but this support will only go so far if people cannot access training and development opportunities as well.

“The Government needs to do much more on support and investment in life-long learning if it is serious about helping people re-skill and upskill to find work as we go through this period of significant change.”

On apprenticeships: 

“Efforts to incentivise employers to invest in new apprenticeships are welcome. However, to ensure the best use of public funds we believe that these should have been more tightly focused and more generous: aimed at boosting apprenticeship take up among SMEs, where uptake has historically been low, and focused on opportunities for young people. 

On job protection:

“We are not convinced the Job Retention Bonus will provide sufficient incentive to encourage employers to bring workers back from furlough beyond those they would be planning to bring anyway.

“A simpler way of protecting jobs, and especially those of younger people, would be to extend the Job Retention Scheme for key sectors such as hospitality and leisure beyond October. We believe this would be a more effective use of public funds rather than the Job Retention Bonus.”