I must admit to some surprise at the apparent silence on this forum about latest unemployment figures. On other threads we are reading about increasing dis-ease about government plans to introduce new initiatives like the Work Programme against a backdrop of possible redundancies in the sector.
The following summary highlights the key impacts of the 2009 Budget on welfare-to-work delivery. For each section, I've included the relevant part of the actual Budget report, for reference. This report is still being edited and added to - check back later for more content
Most current predictions say that unemployment will hit 1 million by Christmas, and potentially reach 2 million at some point thereafter. This is substantially less than the 3 million unemployed in the 1980s recession, but is still worse than many UK workers have faced in their career to date.
With the economy heading downhill rapidly, and JSA claimant numbers rising at a rate of knots, what will the impact on providers be? Will there be a huge bump in the number of customers, or will the difficult job market make it tougher to get people into work? Have you delivered job programmes in a recession before?
