By Paul Dicken
18 September 2009
The Welsh Assembly Government is revising its labour market strategy after conceding it is going to miss the key employment target.
The Plaid Cymru-Labour coalition government’s One Wales agreement aimed for 80% of working age adults to be in employment by 2011. Ministers now believe this will be missed. Currently, 69.7% of people in Wales over the age of 16 are classed as economically active.
A paper to the WAG Cabinet, presented by Education and Skills Minister Jane Hutt, said that the UK Department for Work and Pensions programmes would achieve only around half the increase in employment needed. Even that was ‘optimistic’ given the recession.
Hutt expects the labour market strategy to ‘help significantly by streamlining and integrating the wide range of interventions at the
all-Wales and local levels’.
The WAG came under fire from opposition parties after admitting it would miss the target. Welsh Conservative spokesman on industry, Alun Cairns, said ministers had set a target ‘they knew was unrealistic’.
Welsh Liberal Democrat economy spokeswoman Jenny Randerson said the partnership strategy between the DWP and WAG did not ‘mean that we have to march entirely to the UK government’s tune. There are initiatives here in Wales that we need to take forward to suit our low-skilled workforce and our high economic inactivity levels’.
A WAG spokeswoman said the 80% target was clearly a challenging ‘longer-term aspiration’. She added: ‘We have already made significant improvements – with the latest official figures showing a continued fall in the number of people unemployed in Wales, compared with a rise in the rest of the UK.’
18 September 2009
The Welsh Assembly Government is revising its labour market strategy after conceding it is going to miss the key employment target.
The Plaid Cymru-Labour coalition government’s One Wales agreement aimed for 80% of working age adults to be in employment by 2011. Ministers now believe this will be missed. Currently, 69.7% of people in Wales over the age of 16 are classed as economically active.
A paper to the WAG Cabinet, presented by Education and Skills Minister Jane Hutt, said that the UK Department for Work and Pensions programmes would achieve only around half the increase in employment needed. Even that was ‘optimistic’ given the recession.
Hutt expects the labour market strategy to ‘help significantly by streamlining and integrating the wide range of interventions at the
all-Wales and local levels’.
The WAG came under fire from opposition parties after admitting it would miss the target. Welsh Conservative spokesman on industry, Alun Cairns, said ministers had set a target ‘they knew was unrealistic’.
Welsh Liberal Democrat economy spokeswoman Jenny Randerson said the partnership strategy between the DWP and WAG did not ‘mean that we have to march entirely to the UK government’s tune. There are initiatives here in Wales that we need to take forward to suit our low-skilled workforce and our high economic inactivity levels’.
A WAG spokeswoman said the 80% target was clearly a challenging ‘longer-term aspiration’. She added: ‘We have already made significant improvements – with the latest official figures showing a continued fall in the number of people unemployed in Wales, compared with a rise in the rest of the UK.’
