What exactly is an apprenticeship guarantee? That’s the major question to come out of Wednesday night’s Covid press conference after Boris Johnson committed to offering an apprenticeship to all young people:
I think it is going to be vital that we guarantee apprenticeships for young people. We will have to look after people across the board, but young people in particular, I think, should be guaranteed an apprenticeship.
While the commitment was there, the detail was not. Is this really a guarantee for all young people? In the first quarter of this year, over 350,000 people aged 16 to 24 were unemployed (excluding those in full-time education); another 1.5 million aged 18 to 24-year-olds were registered as economically inactive. Taking into account the disproportionate effect Covid-19 is projected to have on young people’s livelihoods, the government may have just committed itself to providing hundreds of thousands of apprenticeships – if not more – if you consider those looking for work, soon to be out of work, and people who weren’t looking for work but find the idea of a work ‘guarantee’ rather appealing.
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