About the campaign

The Million Jobs campaign stands up for young people without work.

We want government, companies and communities to make a big, organised effort to give our young people a first shot.

For the last three years nearly one million young people have been unemployed in Britain. The number of 16-24 year olds out-of-work for more than twelve months has increased by over 150% since 2008.

Too many of our bright young things are struggling to get on. They are fresh, have bags of energy and hundreds of ideas. They are Britain’s most potent natural resource, and are crying out for somebody to give them a chance.

But we are not doing enough to help.

The Government’s much hailed Youth Contract won’t scratch the surface. A recent survey found that 78% of employers were either unaware of the scheme or would not be making use of it.

Just 22% of employers say they will take on a young person directly from education and only 5.5% take 16 year olds straight from school.

The next generation are easily written off as unskilled and unmotivated. Almost a quarter of employers recently told the CIPD that better quality applications would encourage them to recruit more young people. And nearly 60% of businesses agreed that young people have unrealistic expectations of work.

As such there are 979,000 jobless young people and around 420,000 18-24 year olds claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance.

This is completely unacceptable.

We need to take action to foster the future and make sure tomorrow’s Britain is strong, prosperous and exciting. The only way to guarantee this is to start making the most of our million young minds.

What’s the problem?