We’re simply not interested in giving you any more bad news.
“We are living in unprecedented times / strange times”....blah, blah, blah.
We all know that...but we want jobs, we’re ambitious and we want to move on - earn some money and get on with our lives. We want to start living.
What’s happened to Apprenticeships numbers in the UK in the last 6 Months?
Future-talent.com usually has between 750 - 1000 apprenticeships advertised on the site at any one time. Then, at the end of March 2020 as the pandemic took hold the number of apprentice roles advertised dropped to around 150. That’s quite a large drop. In simple terms the number of roles we advertise gives us a fairly clear indication of the health of the apprentice market and the wider UK economy.
If there are lots of apprenticeships advertised it means that companies feel confident enough that they can sell and trade their products both in the UK and the rest of the World in order to expand and recruit more employees in order to cope with the additional work.
As you can see from the line graph below the number of jobs dropped significantly toward the end of March at the 100-150 level and they stayed at that way for 7 - 8 weeks.
The good news is, that in or around the beginning of June (week 22) things began to recover and the number of apprenticeships began to recover from the low 100’s and continued to increase to the 275(ish) level and the overall trend is recovery.
As of today there are over 300 apprentice roles advertised on the site from companies like EY, QA Consulting, The Royal Navy and BDO are all actively recruiting apprentices.
So things are slowly but surely getting better.
There is also some help for you from the UK Government which you might be eligible for.
If you are 16-24 years old, and claiming Universal Credit, and are at “risk of long term unemployment” you will be eligible for a 6-month paid placement with a local employer. The government will pay your full wages and it won't cost the company providing the placement a penny. Its called The Kickstart Scheme. It’s an incentive for companies to provide work experience to young people. The hope is - you are offered a full-time role by the company at the end of the placement period, however, that is not guaranteed at the beginning of the scheme.
The positives are: you will get valuable work experience for at least 25 hours a week for 6 months, skills and confidence which can be used as a stepping stone into further employment.
The Kickstart Scheme doesn't go live until November 2020 so it remains to be seen how effective it is in helping 16-24 year olds into work.
Its early days - but there is some positive news which we can share with you.
Hopefully the outlook will be even better in the next 6 months.
Good luck.
#yougotthis