£4,000 Grants To Hire Young Staff

Employers can get Government grants of around £4,000 for hiring young, inexperienced and vulnerable new workers.

The new employer recruitment initiative, backed by £10 million of Scottish Government money, is designed to incentivise employers to take on young staff who have struggled to find or hold down a job.

The new programme replaces a previous scheme which created up to 10,000 job opportunities across Scotland.

The incentive offers employers around £4,000 to offset the additional costs of recruiting and employing a young person, including equipment and staff time for training and induction.

Colin Borland, head of external affairs at the Federation of Small Businesses, said: By connecting Scotland's enthusiastic but inexperienced young people with the country's army of small firms, we can boost businesses and develop skills for life.

These helpful incentives mitigate some costs associated with the very smallest businesses expanding their headcount.

We've made the case to the Scottish Government and to local authorities about the need to simplify existing programmes. We welcome this new employer recruitment Incentive which should make it easier for small firms to access the help they need.''

Skills Secretary Roseanna Cunningham said: We are seeing improvements in the number of young people in employment.

Only five European countries have lower youth unemployment rates than Scotland and the lowest ever numbers of 16 to 19-year-olds not in education, employment or training.

But we want to match the best in Europe and have committed to aim to reduce youth unemployment by 40% by 2021.

This new initiative will specifically target young people who face the biggest barriers to employment and also responds to the demands of employers by delivering a consistent and simple recruitment incentive to ensure that employing a young person remains an attractive proposition.

David O'Neill, president of council umbrella body Cosla, said: In local government we recognise that young people have had a tough time over the last few years accessing employment.

This has been especially true for more vulnerable young people who for a variety of reasons may struggle even at the best of times to find and hold down a job.

It is for this reason that local authorities worked extremely hard with local employers to ensure that the previous Youth Employment Scotland Fund created 10,000 jobs for young unemployed people.

With this achieved I can say that local government is now just as committed to ensuring that the new incentive will create even more jobs for young people that need them.''

Pamela Smith, depute chair of the Scottish Local Authority Economic Development Group, added: We are particularly supportive of the fact that these additional resources will be targeted at our more vulnerable job seekers to help move them into, quality sustainable employment.''