Numbers game Unemployment

The rate of unemployment for young adults aged 18 to 24 is double that of older workers despite an overall drop in unemployment levels, the New Policy Institute (NPI)s Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion 2002 survey reveals (see graph).However, the Department for Work and Pensions maintains the figures make things look worse than they really are. Short-term unemployment is normal as young people move around a lot when they enter the workplace, but the Government has eradicated long-term youth unemployment through initiatives such as the New Deal'said a spokesperson. The picture also reveals that despite a reduction of 12 per cent since 1993, 26 per cent of the 190,000 19-year-olds surveyed still lacked an NVQ level two in 2002.Educational attainment and child poverty, however, have been improving slowly since the early 1990s. Report author and NPI director Guy Palmer said: To meet Government targets to eradicate poverty by 2020, work needs to be increased by at least a third. The number of children below the poverty line was reduced by one million last year, but they need a reduction of a further half a million to meet their 2004 target.For a copy of the report visit www.poverty.org.uk/intro/index.htm.