Y Pwyllgor Datblygu Economaidd a Thrafnidiaeth
Adolygiad Polisi: Anweithgarwch Economaidd (Rhestr o’r yamatebwyr)
Review of Economic Inactivity in Wales by the National Assembly’s Economic Development and Transport Committee
Response of the Regeneration Directorate, Carmarthenshire County Council
Introduction We welcome the Committee’s review of economic inactivity in Wales at this time and the opportunity it gives us to make a contribution on the issues involved and to highlight the situation in Carmarthenshire. The review comes at a particularly appropriate time. At the end of last year the Carmarthenshire Objective 1 Partnership, as part of an annual economic review, highlighted the extent of local inactivity not only in relation to UK levels, to the numbers involved relative to the unemployed, but also to the implications for achieving Carmarthenshire’s GDP and job creation targets. It was therefore decided to pass the matter on to the County’s Labour Market Development group, which includes ELWa and Job Centre Plus, to consider the issues further and identify potential areas of action. Inactivity in Carmarthenshire The 2001 Census shows that 50,863 (41%) of 16-74 year olds are inactive. Excluding students and the retired leaves 25,515 inactive, those looking after home/family, the sick/disabled and others. The County’s Regeneration Executive, consisting of the Council, WDA, ELWa and the Regional Tourism Partnership, has an agreed five year Sites, Premises and Infrastructure Masterplan to provide the physical capacity to create jobs and wealth. The target is to create 4,500 jobs and safeguard others. The current level of claimant unemployment is around 2,400. It is therefore apparent that job creation targets cannot be met from the unemployment reserve alone. Consequently, we need to look at the inactive as potential labour supply. The geographic pattern of inactivity is concentrated in the former areas of heavy industry and mining of south-east Carmarthenshire with permanent sickness or disability affecting economic participation. Within south-east Carmarthenshire, the 2001 Census shows that Communities First areas have high levels of inactivity. However, those high levels extend wider than the Communities First wards in the Llanelli and the Amman and Gwendraeth valley areas. Nevertheless, the worst areas account for only about half of all the inactive. Those caring for home and family are more geographically widespread. Rural Carmarthenshire, although not having concentrations of inactivity, still has 31% of all the inactive. The relationship of inactivity to low skills is particularly striking in Carmarthenshire. Nearly 60% of the inactive have no qualifications. The issue is a complex one with individuals having different mixtures of characteristics of life cycle, gender, skills, attitudes to work/benefit regimes, location, work history, health, social background etc. The Way Forward Given the importance of job creation to WAG (A Winning Wales), to the South West Wales region now formulating an economic development framework and to authorities such as Carmarthenshire, there is a need to focus on the issue of inactivity and attach a higher importance to it, than in the past. In doing this attention should be focused on,- Better information: the characteristics of the population only go so far in explaining inactivity. Responses of the inactive to questions about wanting/seeking work are often ambiguous or unreliable. A better understanding of the perceptions, social influences and attitudes to work/benefits amongst the inactive is required. This could be addressed through an enhanced Labour Force Survey and local initiatives focused on Job Centre Plus. Better information for the inactive is also needed.
- Partnership: an approach based on partnership and co-ordination is essential. The only solutions that work are multi agency solutions. It is apparent that there are many public and voluntary organisations working in the field that are not aware of each other and what others are doing. Integrating organisations such as Job Centre Plus, ELWa and Local Health Boards should be central and will be crucial to partnership working, particularly given the significant health and skills issues affecting economic participation.
- Actions to increase economic activity need to be seen as part of wider economic and community development work.
- Achieving results is most successful when there are jobs for people to enter. However, it is often the case that job creation investment can occur adjacent to areas of high inactivity, yet such people fail to gain from this. There is a need to have local programmes that establish direct links between promoting activity amongst people and the jobs being created by public and private investment.
- There is a need for closer working with companies at a local level to match skills upgrading to business requirements and to involve them in the process of enabling the inactive to work.
- Not all skills requirements can be met by facilitating the inactive into work, however. Many higher skilled jobs will go unfilled if we continue to lose our qualified and talented young people. Actions to retain and attract such people must go hand in hand with actions to reduce inactivity.
- Investment is needed in proximity to areas of high inactivity in order to create the job opportunities on which the reduction of inactivity will depend. There is therefore a need for WAG to realise that a failure to address regional disparities will mean that inactivity rates will not decrease.
- Focusing on the worst areas will concentrate resources and help deploy them more effectively. However, a narrow concentration of effort on Communities First areas alone will ignore adjoining areas with similar inactivity problems.
- Within such areas, social housing areas appear to experience inactivity more than elsewhere.
- Although a focus on the worst areas is important, we should not lose sight of those other inactive, who want to return to work and where opportunities to do so exist, eg those living in or near strategic market towns and particular types of inactive people irrespective of where they live.
- It would be wrong to think of the inactivity problem as solely one of the needs and abilities of individuals. Inactivity has increased at the same time as there has been a rise in the number of workless households polarising communities and potentially passing on attitudes to new generations. Consequently actions to move people from inactivity to employment need to integrate with other actions aimed at dealing with family breakdown and fragmentation, eg in the areas of crime reduction, failing schools, housing renewal etc.
- Notwithstanding the above, in the short term the most effective actions will be those that can be targeted at the inactive who have a reasonable chance of entering employment, eg those wanting work, not having a long history of inactivity, without serious skill deficiencies, with barriers to work that can be overcome and where there are employment opportunities.
- Therefore actions will need to be both short and long term. The latter will involve, in particular, addressing the health and lower educational outcomes and skill deficiencies associated with inactivity.
- Better information (see above), research and their dissemination will lead to better policy.
- The finding and dissemination of good practice, the use of benchmarking groups, pilot actions and partnering arrangements within the UK and with European regions will also lead to better actions.
Carmarthenshire County Council
