The UK's 15.6% youth unemployment rate is unusually high compared with the 3.4% rate for older workers. (AFP pic)LONDON: Faisa Omar applied for more than 500 jobs in the UK and got nowhere -- a slog she likened to "shouting into the void". It took a 10-week training course, tailored to the green energy sector, to finally land her a job within a month.
Her story is one the Labour government hopes to replicate on a much bigger scale, as it prepares to receive a report and proposals next week that would, controversially, restrict youth sickness and disability benefits in order to fund back-to-work programmes aimed at the nearly 1 million young people not in work, education or training.
Britain had 981,000 people aged 16-24 not in employment, education or training (NEET) in the second quarter of this year, accounting for 13% of the age group as a whole and a share that was the second-highest in Europe last year.
