Today’s headline figures on the Work Programme are not good news for the government: in its first 12 months, only 2.3 per cent of participants actually landed sustainable employment against the department’s target of 5.5 per cent. This sounds even worse when you contrast it with the government’s own figures suggesting that 5 per cent of people who have been unemployed for a long time can find sustainable jobs without any intervention at all, suggesting the programme is actually worse than doing nothing.
At Coffee House, we are keen to see the Work Programme succeed, not just because it will vindicate the ministers co-ordinating it, but also because a successful programme would bring those furthest from the labour market back into employment. So the first tranche of figures is disappointing.
But they must be read as part of the broader economic picture: when this scheme was set up, it was based upon the assumption that the British economy would be growing by 2 per cent a year.
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