Helping Young People into Employment

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 16 February 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:09, 16 February 2022

Well, some of the schemes that we're going to provide should bear fruit rather more immediately. For example, we've got the opportunity to carry on supporting young entrepreneurs through Big Ideas Wales—you can see those people starting up their businesses; you can see the barriers to employment fund that we're providing. So, you'll find some of them will have a more immediate impact and others will take longer, because, in the employability support we provide, for example, in the Job Growth Wales+ scheme, a range of the support schemes is actually about making sure people are ready for jobs, looking at the skills issues they have, looking to supporting them with a personalised range of support around them, so you're going to see a longer term impact of that.

And, actually, I expect to publish the new employability plan in the coming weeks, and that again will set out further detail on how we are going to use the responsibilities and the resources we have to be able to complement what the Department for Work and Pensions are now doing, and that will probably mean we're going to seek to address the challenges of people who are further away from the labour market. So, it's likely to cost more than DWP schemes, helping people who are, essentially, job ready, but also it may take longer to get those people ready. But, as we do publish the employability strategy, I look forward to being able to provide more detail on the points you make and how we'll then assess the outcomes that we think we're going to be able to achieve with and for people, whether young people or older people, in terms of the employment outcomes we want to see in every community across Wales.