Labour did it before. Can it do it again, with things being so much harder now? New Labour’s new deal for the young unemployed levered large numbers of people into work, but in 1998 the economy was on the upswing. Now, economic stagnation has resulted in falling vacancies and rising unemployment. And Donald Trump’s war threatens much worse in the future. Today the Department for Work and Pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, promises “life-changing opportunities to young people” to “significantly reverse the increase we inherited in those not in education, employment or training”, now numbering nearly a million.

A major boost will be the greatly extended youth jobs guarantee, offering six-month-long subsidised-wage roles for unemployed 18- to 24-year-olds. And a youth jobs grant will offer employers a £3,000 subsidy to hire young people who are on benefits and have been out of work for six months. It mirrors the Future Jobs Fund that Labour brought in, after the financial crash, in 2009 – one of its most successful programmes, which boosted participants’ chance of employment by 27%, with a net gain per participant of £7,750 in increased wages and tax receipts and reduced benefit payments. (David Cameron scrapped it in 2010 without waiting to see those results.)

Labour will reform the apprenticeship levy, for too long used to invest in existing staff, and focus it on young people and new starters, with a £2,000 grant encouraging smaller employers to take on each of 50,000 new apprentices. All told, the government aims to create 200,000 more jobs.

That help is sorely needed. I was at the Tower Hamlets jobcentre in London last week, sitting beside work coaches in their weekly meetings with unemployed young people. I heard the rising desperation in the voices of those applying over and over again for jobs: they never even get rejections to their carefully honed CVs – just........

© The Guardian