Ahead of the official publication of Work Programme Outcome Statistics by ONS this morning, ministers have been preparing the ground for low expectations.
Ahead of the official publication of Work Programme Outcome Statistics by ONS this morning, ministers have been preparing the ground for low expectations.
The Telegraph reports unofficial figures showing 70% of participants remain jobless after a year on the scheme:
Unofficial figures released ahead of the government’s own results showed 71 per cent of those who joined the £5 billion Work Programme when it started in June 2011 had not found employment by September this year.
This amounted to about 53,000 individuals. About 22,000, or 29 per cent of those who entered the schemes in June last year, had successfully started work.
Out of the 248,000 long-term unemployed adults who joined the programme in June, July and August 2011, about 180,000 were still out of work in September 2012.
As the New Statesman’s Rafael Behr blogged last night, ministers have been preparing the ground for bad news – with a leaked letter from employment minister Mark Hoban revealing the coalition’s attempts to “move the goalposts”:
It has been hard to judge the effectiveness of the policy because the DWP has prevented providers from publishing their data on how many people have actually been placed in work. We have had data on the number of people referred to the Work Programme which suggest that not enough of the long-term unemployed are even getting help through the scheme.
What he haven’t seen – because ministers have continually delayed publication – is how many people have actually been found jobs and how many are staying in work long enough to trigger the payments on which the providers depend if they are not to go bust. In other words, we have yet to get a clear sense of whether the Work Programme is actually working.
That wait comes to an end tomorrow, when, at last, the DWP will publish the numbers. There are hints already that they won’t be encouraging.
Hoban wrote:
“As the Work Programme supports people for two years or more, it is too early to judge Work Programme performance by Job Outcome and Sustainment Payment data alone.”
Adding:
“To better explain Work Programme preferences so far, I will also be releasing a number of ad hoc statistics which show how the programme is moving people off benefits and compare what we have spent on the programme with the cost of the previous employment programme, Flexible new Deal. ERSA, the providers’ trade organisation, will also publish information on how the programme is helping people move into jobs.”
The official figures will be released shortly…
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27 Responses to “Unofficial figures show 70% on Work Programme still jobless after a year”
dani
people are working 8 hours a day, monday to friday and often more to support people on benefits. the least they can do is spend 8 hours a day searching for a job or increasing their skills to get one. i assume he didn’t post on here by carrier pidgeon so he has access to a computer and the sum of human knowledge at his fingertips.
if you are just sitting around waiting then you are taking money from sick children, the disabled, and everyone else less needy than you are. you could send an african village to school for the money it costs to pay for someone to sit on their fat, spotty behind waiting for someone to dump the perfect job in their lap.
if you stopped benefits he’d have a job in days. he would be happier and so would the rest of us.
It was Gandhi who said you should never give able bodied people money except in return for work, otherwise you demean them and you demean yourself.
Newsbot9
There’s no suggestion he’s sitting arround. All he’s said is he hasn’t plunged headlong into slave labour, which has been proven, in study after study, to extend the time people spend unemployed.
If you were serious, you would oppose “Workfare” for that reason. But no, you’d rather further the War On The Poor. You hold up the myth that murdering the poor bv cold and starvation by ending benefits would benefit YOU, because you’re colluding with the people crushing the economy and ending jobs.
Not to mention the crime wave you’d cause by people trying to stay alive, but hey!
dani
there is no excuse to be unemployed long term in this country. you can learn a programming language from scratch in the time this workshy scrounger has been waiting for the work programmer to get back to him. laziness pure and simple. and if we didn’t have to pay for the able bodied lazy claimants we could be far more generous to the disabled and those that have genuine problems getting work
amy
I – along with Gandhi – oppose able bodied people getting any benefits unless it is for a short period in between jobs. you offer money for people to sit at home an lo and behold! several million will take the opportunity
Newsbot9
That’s right, you ignore an economic situation and mare trying to murder a significant proportion of the population to satisfy your bloodlust.
Alternatively, you’re proposing throwing women out of jobs so men can have them.
Jobs are nor magic, you can’t make them appear by wishing it so, when the Government’s economic policy is dedicated to holding down job creation!