00:00Employers told me consistently that particularly in low-paying sectors of the economy where margins are often thin like in
00:07hospitality, restaurants and pubs, that it definitely had an impact and there's no doubt that every time an employer takes
00:14on a young person it's always a risk. Why? Because they're unproven. So the job of government policy is to
00:20minimise risks and maximise an incentive.
00:21In this case, has it made a bad situation? So it's definitely had an impact. There's no doubt about that.
00:28But what nobody should pretend is that somehow or other, the problems that you're seeing in the youth labour market
00:34began in the last two years. They go back for at least two decades. We've got 1.6 million fewer
00:39jobs in low-skilled and medium-skilled type of occupations, the type of jobs that young people would go into
00:46compared to 20 years ago.
00:48Think about what's happened to the Saturday job. It's virtually disappeared. Look at what's happened to apprenticeship starts amongst young
00:54people. They've fallen by a third in just 10 years.
00:57So we've just got to be careful that we don't blame one factor when there are a multitude of factors
01:02that are in play.
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