Youth Employment

Monday 16th March 2026 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Pat McFadden)]

At the Budget, the Chancellor committed more than £1.5 billion to back young people through the youth guarantee and changes to the growth and skills levy.

Today we are going even further. We are announcing almost £1 billion more to help young people into work and training, unlocking up to 200,000 jobs and apprenticeship opportunities by investing in:

The youth jobs grant, an employer hiring incentive worth £3,000 per young person aged 18 to 24 who has been on universal credit and looking for work for six months;



A new apprenticeship incentive, £2,000 for non-levy paying small and medium-sized enterprises in England when they take on new employees aged under 25; and

Expanding the jobs guarantee to 22 to 24-year-olds, meaning all eligible 18 to 24-year-olds across Great Britain will benefit from a fully funded six-month guaranteed paid employment opportunity.

Our ambition is for every 16 to 24-year-old across Great Britain to access opportunity. These changes take the total investment into the youth guarantee and the additional investment in the growth and skills levy to £2.5 billion over the next three years, supporting almost 1 million young people, and creating up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn.

This will begin in April, when the first phase of the jobs guarantee will go live for 18 to 21-year-olds in Birmingham and Solihull, East Midlands, Greater Manchester, Hertfordshire and Essex, Central and East Scotland, and South-west and South-east Wales. This will be followed by national roll-out in the autumn of this year for 18 to 24-year-olds.

Further reform to the growth and skills levy

There has been a 40% drop in young people starting apprenticeships over the past decade. This is why the Government are setting out the next stages of the growth and skills levy reforms, to reverse this sharp decline in apprenticeship starts for 16 to 24-year-olds and address the rising number of those not in education, employment or training.

To support this, we are announcing the expansion of foundation apprenticeships into hospitality and retail. These are sectors that traditionally employ large numbers of young people and provide strong entry points into sustained employment, while also supporting retention and progression.

We are also introducing new apprenticeship units aligned to industrial strategy priorities, to give employers greater flexibility in how they upskill their employees. This will make it easier and faster for businesses to address their critical skills needs in areas including AI, construction and engineering, and we will develop further units informed by ongoing input from industrial strategy growth-driving sectors.

We will prioritise youth apprenticeship starts within the growth and skills levy, stopping the 40% decline in apprenticeship starts that has occurred over the past decade.

This will mean that the Government are no longer funding three leadership and management apprenticeship standards that are largely used by employers for older, established staff as continuing professional development, but are instead using the funding for new apprenticeship starts for young people. A further 13 standards that do not sufficiently support young people or our industrial strategy ambitions will also be defunded.

Streamlining the existing offer ensures that our increased investment delivers maximum value for money, supports clearer routes into skilled jobs, and creates headroom for investment into new opportunities for young people and employers alike.

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