Chris Hasluck

Action to Reduce Worklessness: What Works?

Addressing local concentrations of worklessness is an ongoing challenge for policy at national, regional and local levels. The paper outlines the changing nature of worklessness, the rationale for supply-side and demand-side interventions to address it and the balance between people- and place-based policies. It discusses the issues involved in assessing the contribution of interventions to reduce worklessness and highlights key lessons emerging from a review of the evidence on ‘what works’. While no single model of successful intervention is identified, the importance of outreach, holistic approaches, individualisation and the position of personal advisers, continuing support, flexibility, motivation and aspirations, partnership working and the role of employers is highlighted.

Apprenticeships in England: what next?

This paper examines recent development in Apprenticeship training in England. Since the introduction of Modern Apprenticeships in the mid-1990s this form of training has been subject to much analysis and reform. This paper summarises the current situation and highlights some of the challenges and opportunities which face Apprenticeship over the short to medium term as it seeks to establish itself as a main alternative to the academic pathway through further education.

An information framework for a local labour market

Rational policy-making for local labour markets is dependent upon the availability of good quality labour market information. This article briefly describes the sources and methodology used to develop a framework designed to deliver good quality information relating to the Birmingham local labour market. The development of the information framework was undertaken during 1989 by the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick for the Economic Development Unit of Birmingham City Council. The Council had earlier expressed a need for an effective labour market information system to assist in its planning of work-related non-advanced further education and its contribution to meeting the training needs of the city. The information framework described here relates specifically to Birmingham, but the methodology and results may be of wider interest. The demand for good quality labour market information at the local level has grown substantially over the past decade as local authorities and other agencies become more involved in local economic development and training provision. The Training and Enterprise Councils, whose emergence represents a marked shift towards local training provision, will place a premium upon local labour market intelligence. Thus, the issues raised in this article are likely to be of common interest to all who are concerned with monitoring and evaluating their local labour markets.

(Non)Participation in the Labour Market: Alternative Indicators and Estimates of Labour Reserve in United Kingdom Regions

In the context of the continuance of mass high unemployment in the United Kingdom and considerable debate concerning the ‘real level’ of unemployment, the authors of this paper go beyond the official unemployment rate by focusing on the development of alternative indicators of labour reserve in the regions of the United Kingdom. They show how, on a step-by-step basis, successively ‘broader’ indicators of labour reserve (more specifically, those on government training schemes, various categories of those conventionally defined as economically inactive who would like a job, and those in part-time work because they could not find full-time employment) may be derived by means of data from the Labour Force Survey. They then go on to outline the key features of regional variations in the scope for additional labour-force participation. As labour supply is a dynamic concept, and the utilisation of the labour reserve implies transitions from unemployment and non-employment to employment, selected information on transitions between labour-market states and on the previous economic circumstances of the unemployed is presented. Some key features of the broad regional geography of those categorised as in employment, but ‘on the margins’ of the labour reserve, are highlighted also. Finally, the implications for policy of substantial labour reserves in many regions in the United Kingdom are explored.