With over 200 member organisations the Youth Employment Group is the UK’s largest coalition of youth employment experts.
In response to the crisis, Impetus, Youth Futures Foundation, Youth Employment UK, the Institute for Employment Studies and The Prince’s Trust formed the Youth Employment Group (YEG) to bring together the youth employment sector to help drive the UK’s response. Now with over 200 member organisations, the coalition continues to advocate for full and inclusive employment for young people. In September 2021, Learning & Work also joined the co-chair group.
Young people have been hit first and hardest in the labour market by this pandemic. The Youth Employment Group is focusing on the immediate and longer-term impacts of the coronavirus outbreak on the employment prospects of young people, in particular those facing the greatest challenges.
The group provides the opportunity to work collaboratively, and with governments and policy makers, to ensure that young people – especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds – are best supported during COVID-19 and its aftermath.
The YEG has committed to embedding the views and experiences of young people and the challenges they are facing as a direct result of Covid-19 into the wider work of the group. Established shortly after the YEG, the Youth Voice Forum is chaired by young people and meets monthly on a range of topics, providing a space for them to engage in the work of the YEG and share their thoughts, experiences, challenges and ideas and solutions.
Through a partnership with the Westminster Foundation, the YEG also supports a number of subgroups focusing on the causes and solutions of issues facing different groups of young people, and the support needed. These subgroups focus on:
• Disability
• Youth justice
• Apprenticeships
• Self-employment
• Employers
• Quality of work
• Race
If you would like your organisation to become a member of the Youth Employment Group to share your practices, insights and/or research, please complete our member enquiry form via the link below.
Established in April 2020, the YEG has been advocating for full and inclusive employment for young people
- April 2020: The Youth Employment Group launched | Covered by the Independent
- June 2020: The YEG called for an Opportunity Guarantee for young people | Call published in The Times
- September 2020: The YEG launched their recommendations paper Securing a place for young people in the nation’s economic recovery, calling for government to support the creation of 1,000 extra opportunities per day for young people | Call covered by Channel 4 News
- January and February 2021: The YEG called for an extension to Kickstart, the government’s flagship youth employment COVID-19 programme, publishing a paper on the Five reasons to extend ‘Kickstart’ | Call covered by the Independent
- July 2021: The YEG has been working together to address the short- and long-term challenges posed by the COVID crisis on young people’s prospects. Its’ new paper ‘Levelling Up for young people: Building an Opportunity Guarantee’ brings together this collaborative effort.
- August 2021: The YEG called on the Prime Minister to deliver an Opportunity Guarantee for young people | Call covered in the Mirror
