Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent estimates she has made of the number of people who have found employment through Plan for Jobs skills and employment programmes.

The Department for Work and Pensions will be monitoring and evaluating the Plan for Jobs programmes throughout their implementation.

As of the 11th October, 86,000 young people have started a Kickstart job. Over 204,900 roles have been made available for young people to apply to through the scheme and over 307,500 jobs have been approved for funding.

Although care is taken when processing and analysing Kickstart applications, referrals and starts, the data collected might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system, which has been developed quickly.

The management information above has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics, but is provided in the interests of transparency. Work is ongoing to improve the quality of information available for the programme.

Employment outcomes are available for Job Entry Targeted Support (JETS) in England and Wales and JETS Scotland, and provided in the table below. It should be noted that JETS provides support for up to six months and many people who have started on the scheme will not yet have had time to achieve an employment outcome.

JETS Starts and Employment Outcomes

Note: JETS data are taken from the Provider Referrals and Payments (PRaP) system. An employment outcome is defined as when an individual achieves £1,000 cumulative earnings within eight months of starting on the programme as identified via HMRC earnings information.

The number of people who have started on Job Finding Support (JFS) and Sector Based Work Academies (SWAPs) provision is provided in the tables below. Employment outcomes for these programmes are not currently available.

SWAPs Starts

Notes: A SWAP start is defined as someone attending the first day of the placement, which is usually the first day of pre-employment training. A start is only recorded where a claimant attended their placement. SWAPs starts data are collected by Jobcentre staff and reflect the number of SWAP starts by claimants in receipt of Universal Credit (UC), Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) or Income Support (IS).

JFS Starts

Notes: JFS Starts are taken from the Provider Referrals and Payments (PRaP) system. Starts occur where an initial meeting has taken place and participant has acknowledged receipt of appropriate documents such as the Job Finding Action Plan (JFAP). JFS Start volumes, particularly those in more recent months, are likely to increase as starts can be recorded retrospectively.

Through our Youth Offer we currently have over 135 Youth Hubs physically open to support young people across Great Britain get into work and the ambition is to have 150 open by the end of the year.