Disadvantaged young job seekers looking for work: findings from three UK local labour markets

Paper presented to LLAKES Conference, University of London, 18-19 October 2012

Rebecca Tunstall, CHP, University of York: Anne Green, IER, University of Warwick; Ruth Lupton, CASE, LSE; Simon Watmough, European University Institute, Florence; Katie Bates, CASE, LSE.

Funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation

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The Study

Designed to test for ‘postcode discrimination’ in employment 3 urban labour markets in England and Wales 3 neighbourhoods in each, two ‘stigmatised’, one ‘bland’ Fictional CVs for ‘promising’ young people purporting to live in the

neighbourhoods 2001 applications for 667 real vacancies requiring limited education

and skills (Sales assistants, security guards, cleaners, office admin, accounts clerks, kitchen hands and chefs)

Plus: Street interviews about neighbourhood reputations Analysis of vacancies and competition data Interviews with 14 relevant employers, 11 intermediaries, 57 young job seekers Street survey of job ads – the “on your bike” method

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The Vacancies

Advertised on www.direct.gov.uk, gumtree.co.uk and number of other employers and aggregator sites, Aug 2010-June 2011;

Job site appeared to be within 15 miles of the centre of the 3 labour markets;

Which did not require degrees, vocational qualifications or substantial experience

Decision-maker appeared to be based in the local labour market; Applications could be made via email, upload to website or post; Did not appear to be offers of self employment;

Covered the 1st stage of candidate selection up to interview or similar stage.

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Postcode discrimination?% positive responses, all 2001 applications 17% received a positive response

13% received a negative response69% received no response

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Postcode discrimination?% positive responses, only the cases where employers expressed a preference

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Postcode Discrimination?

Not: for these kinds of jobs with this mode of application for well qualified and experienced candidates at the first stage of application

Evidence that jobseekers should apply without fear of postcode discrimination

Postcode discrimination’ in employment might exist outside scope of experiment: less-well-qualified candidates, other jobs, face-to-face and phone applications; at interview stage of selection; or once employment has started

What else did we learn from spending a year applying for low skilled jobs?

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The nature of work8

• Seventy-eight per cent of the jobs with wage data available paid under £7 per hour and so under the ‘living wage’. Fifty-four per cent paid at the minimum wage level

• 76% were not full-time, office hours

The changing nature of job search9

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

0-3 days 4-7 days 8-14 days 15-21 days 22 days plus

Pe

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1st

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Chances of a positive response by time elapsed since advert

• Increasingly web-based, agencies, job trials• Not waiting for a ‘closure date’

Discouraged Workers

“You send out all these applications and you never hear anything back, so you start thinking there’s no point sending any more off” (24 year old man, weak labour market)

“Once you’ve been knocked back a few times it hurts your confidence as well so I think you end up applying less and less and less, until you’re not applying at all. It hurts your confidence if you hear nowt” (25 year old man, weak labour market)

“I took my CV into [name of shop], they left it on the counter; the other worker who wasn’t a manager threw it in the bin, because people are trying to protect their own jobs, it’s dog-eat-dog at the moment.” (22 year old man, medium labour market)

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The importance of place (1)

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0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

Strong Medium Weak

Chances of a positive response by labour market characteristics

Also substantial variation by type of job

The importance of place (2)

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One of the government’s strategies for getting more people back to work is to get them to look further afield. In 2011, Job Seeker’s Agreements extended potential travel requirements from 60 to 90 minutes from job seekers’ homes (Freud, 2011)

But, most people don’t travel this far to work:In 2009, 79% of all workers travelled 30 minutes or less to work (outside London) (DFT 2011), and in the neighbourhoods we looked at 78% of young people travelled 10km or less

There are good reasons – cost, practicality, domestic responsibilities And employers prefer local people

“[Distance] matters a lot. Someone close by is better” (employer, strong labour market)

“[the main considerations are] previous employment history, qualifications, and travel-to-work” (employer, strong labour market)

“We know from experience that it doesn’t work if people are too far away … so we try and place them within 5 miles” (intermediary, weak labour market)

See also: Green et al. (1991); Zenou (2002), Lupton (2003) Nunn et al. (2010).

SO travelling further won’t necessarily help

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The number of jobs available is a lot smaller when travel is taken into account

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Legend

" Location of Job Seeker

30 minute public transport zone

10km Zone

Jobs

jobs

1

10

50

100

Most of the jobs in the TTWAs were within 10km of our jobseekers. But only between a third and a half within 30 mins public transport

Conclusions

Real labour demand problems in particular local labour markets‘Dog eat dog’ for low paid, short hours, flexible workNo response is normal practice – discouraged workersLong term consequences for ‘the corrosion of character’ (Sennett)?What do we do about this? – apprenticeships?, Living Wages? Sharing the work around? Training/work experience v. endless job search?Location matters, and transport. Whose responsibility is this, who should bear the cost?In the shorter term:

Job seekers need to understand the labour markets they are operating in: applications need to be speedy, targeted and intensive

Better tailored local intelligence and advice would really help If we’re serious about getting the most disadvantaged into work we need

excellent public transport (or cars), and free readily available internet access for all

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For more info:

‘Disadvantaged Young People Looking for Work: A Job in Itself?’

Published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Oct 2012

www.jrf.org.uk

For any other info, please contact:

Becky.tunstall@york.ac.uk

Centre for Housing Policy, University of York