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New insights added to our Youth Employment Toolkit
May 28, 25
High-quality evidence on the impact, cost and effectiveness of summer employment programmes is now easily accessible for decision makers.
Our free, digital Youth Employment Toolkit is the first resource of its kind to bring together existing research on ‘what works’ to help young people find and keep good work.
It does this by simplifying information about commonly used employment interventions and making it easier to access and action.
We launched the Toolkit in July 2023, with evidence on seven common intervention types:
- Apprenticeships
- Basic skills training
- Life skills training
- Mentoring and coaching
- On-the-job training
- Off-the-job training
- Wage subsidy programmes
Today, we have expanded the Toolkit, adding the latest available evidence on summer employment programmes to help policymakers, employers and funders understand how this type of intervention might support education and training outcomes for young people.
About the evidence
The new insights are based on a 2024 systematic review of evaluations, conducted by the Institute for Employment Studies, with support from the Campbell Collaboration. It was jointly funded by the Youth Endowment Fund and Youth Futures Foundation.
The review focused on programmes designed to support transitions, that took place outside of term-time education and were delivered in the United States.
The findings suggest that, by supporting personal development and increasing job readiness and skills, summer employment programmes may have an indirect positive impact on employment outcomes over the longer term.
Discover more on our Toolkit page.
What are summer employment programmes?
Summer employment programmes typically engage young people at secondary school or who are transitioning to higher education. They provide paid work experience and/or subsidised entry-level jobs for a short, fixed period and typically run for six-to-eight weeks during school or college summer breaks.
Many summer employment programmes focus support on marginalised young people. This means evidence collected on their cost and impact can help decision-makers think about how to support young people who are at risk of becoming NEET.
What’s next?
We want to build on the existing evidence to understand:
1) more about the potential impact of summer job programmes in both the short and long term
2) if and how they could be translated to a UK context
To do this, we are partnering with the Youth Endowment Fund to conduct the first large-scale trial of a summer employment programme in the UK.
We are also keen to explore the implications of these insights for employers.
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“As a What Works Centre, our mission is to put evidence at the heart of decision making. Our Toolkit is an important and iterative resource that allows us to meaningfully synthesise and translate robust evidence, supporting policymakers, funders and commissioners to make decisions that help young people progress into good work.”
Chris Goulden - Director of Impact and Evidence, Youth Futures Foundation
The Youth Employment Toolkit will continue to be updated as the evidence base matures, including additional interventions and updates on current ones.
