Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what (a) recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of unemployment amongst 16 to 35 year olds and (b) steps her Department is taking to reduce unemployment among that age group in (i) Birmingham, Edgbaston constituency, (ii) Birmingham and (iii) the West Midlands region.

(a) The Department regularly publishes statistics on the Alternative Claimant Count, and these are available by age and local authority, region and constituency here:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/

Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:

https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started.html

The ACC provides a measure of local levels of claimant unemployment over time and across areas back to 2013

(b) The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is committed to supporting everyone who has been affected by the unprecedented impact of Covid19 on the economy and the labour market.

In July 2020 the Chancellor confirmed a Plan for Jobs, which placed DWP at the heart of providing significantly expanded employment support to people becoming newly unemployed and those falling in to long-term unemployment, investing £30bn nationally in a mix of measures to create, support and protect jobs. This included £2bn for the Kickstart scheme, £2.9bn for the Restart programme, funding to increase the number of JCP Work Coaches by 13,500 and a range of other measures focussed on boosting worksearch and skills.