UK launches £238m Covid unemployment programme
The government has today launched a £238m unemployment programme to provide skills and training to people who have lost their jobs during the Covid crisis.
The Job Entry Targeted Support scheme will provide participants with CV and interview training, individual work coaches and “specialist advice on how people can move into growing sectors”, according to the Department for Work and Pensions.
Anyone who has been unemployed for at least three months is eligible for the programme, which will go live in London on 19 October.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.1 per cent last month, with many more job losses expected when the government’s furlough scheme ends at the end of the month.
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The Bank of England forecasts that the jobless rate will hit 7.5 per cent by the end of the year.
Today’s announcement comes just weeks after the government began its £2bn Kickstart scheme, which provides funding for businesses to create six-month apprenticeships.
Work and Pensions secretary Therese Coffey said the new Job Entry Targeted Support programme would “boost the prospects” of 250,000 people across the UK.
She said: “This scheme will help those left out of work as a result of Covid-19, and is one strand of our wider Plan for Jobs which will also support young people onto the jobs ladder through Kickstart, offer the training needed to pivot into new roles through our Sector Based Work Academy Programme and prepare people for getting back into work.”
Shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the package did not go far enough.
“By the government’s own admission at least four million people could lose their jobs during the crisis,” he said.
“All it can muster in response are piecemeal schemes and meaningless slogans.
“This new scheme offers very little new support and relies on already overstretched Work Coaches on the ground, while many of the new Work Coaches promised have yet to materialise.”