An employment expert has praised the UK’s Jobcentre network as being one of the most “sophisticated” in Europe as the public employment service begins celebrating its centenary this month.
The Public Employment Service was created under the Labour Exchange Act of 1909 when unemployment rates of eight per cent were similar to today. By 1912, some 62 were up-and-running and, a year later, they were placing about 3,000 people per day in work.
The aim, according to Nigel Meager, director of the Institute of Employment Studies, was to both “compensate for market failure and inefficiency in the labour market” and to fulfil a range of “important social policy ambitions”.
In the first instance, the goal was to ensure that demand for workers “translates as smoothly and as quickly as possible into people in jobs, with a minimum of unfilled vacancies,” he said.
In terms of social policy, however, the point was to help individuals “to whom employers and private employment agencies were least attracted” and to be most active in areas of the country “where labour demand was at its weakest”.
Given the organisation’s history, Meager added, the UK now has “one of the longest commitments to a public employment service in Europe and it is arguably one of the most sophisticated”.
This is because, by integrating traditional job-brokering activities with the administration of benefits, the UK pioneered an approach that is now being widely adopted across Europe.
In 2001, the Employment Service morphed into Jobcentre Plus when it merged with the Benefits Agency in a move that “marked a return to the original philosophy of the welfare state, with benefit provision clearly linked to a demonstrable commitment to search for work”, said Meager.
The move also led to the gradual extension of a ‘work-focused’ approach to other groups of benefit recipients such as disabled people and single mothers.
Secondly, Jobcentres have progressively been trying to develop “regular, sustained and increasingly personalised” relationships with the unemployed over recent years by providing them with incremental advice and support in line with length of time that they remain out of work.
Not only is this approach cost-effective, but it also means that resources are focused on those that require it most. As a result, it is likely that more people have been helped to come off benefits during this latest recession than in similar downturns experienced during the 1980s and 1990s.
This situation is despite the fact that the service “has struggled to adapt to the growing numbers of claimants in professional and managerial occupations”, Meager said.
Another weak spot of the service has traditionally been in encouraging employers to move away from private recruitment agencies that are perceived to have higher quality and better screened staff on their books.
But Meager believes that recent initiatives such as Local Employment Partnerships are beginning to turn the tide. Such schemes offer a more customised recruitment service and can also offer pre-employment training geared to specific jobs.
“Looking ahead, however, there remain challenges for the service as we emerge from the downturn and it balances the demands of employers and skilled job seekers on the one hand, with its social remit to mitigate disadvantage and support the hard-to-help on the other,” Meager warned.
The Institute of Employment Studies is a not-for-profit body that both undertakes research and provides consultancy services.
