Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the impact of the Youth Offer on reducing unemployment for young people aged 16 to 24, in particular for young people who have complex needs and face multiple disadvantages.

The Department of Work and Pensions Youth Offer provides individually tailored work coach support to young people aged 16 to 24 who are in the Universal Credit Intensive Work Search group. This support includes the Youth Employment Programme, Youth Employability Coaches for young people with additional barriers to finding work, and Youth Hubs across Great Britain.

The Youth Offer is subject to a Process Evaluation, with full findings expected to be shared internally by late 2023. This will inform any improvements or future changes to the Youth Offer policy. The evaluation plans which involve hearing from young people from a range of backgrounds and circumstances and those that work with them, on the services they receive to understand their effectiveness and enable us to make improvements as appropriate.

There are also plans for an impact assessment of the effectiveness of the Youth Offer whose findings will be shared internally once available.

Official Labour Market Statistics are produced by the ONS. The latest data (June-August ’22) shows that 372,000 young people are unemployed, this is a decrease of 62,000 on the previous quarter and a decrease of 141,000 compared to pre-pandemic levels (Dec-Feb ’20).