A low skills base and a shortage of job vacancies is condemning generations of Birmingham families to a lifetime of unemployment, a report has warned.
The report – Supporting the Recovery – by a Birmingham City Council scrutiny committee shows that 61,400 private sector jobs disappeared in the region between 1998 and 2008, one of the worst performances anywhere in the country. In Birmingham alone 21,900 jobs were lost.
An additional 135,000 jobs would have to be created in Birmingham, Solihull and the Black Country simply to bring the region up to the national average.
With more than a third of Birmingham jobs now in the public sector, there are fears that Government spending cuts will have the effect of pushing up even further the city’s unemployment rate, which already stands at almost 12 per cent.
Birmingham’s position as a city with an above-average younger population – something that is routinely highlighted as a huge advantage by council leaders – could actually hamper efforts to promote economic recovery, the scrutiny inquiry found.
The working age population is expected to increase by 5.3 per cent by 2020, with the result that an additional 32,400 school leavers will be looking for jobs.
The report warns: “This will add to a situation of structural, long term unemployment and worklessness in some areas.
“The persistent and multi-generational worklessness in some parts of the city is still a major feature of our economic landscape.”
The report says that a city council target to create 100,000 jobs in Birmingham by 2026 is not ambitious enough and is unlikely to meet the demands of the growing working age population.
Evidence from business leaders presented to the enquiry highlighted serious concerns about Birmingham’s low skills base.
A fifth of the working age population has no qualifications, the highest figure in any of Britain’s major cities. In the West Midlands, only Wolverhampton has a worse record.
The problem is at its greatest in the poorer inner city wards. Over half of working age people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage in Birmingham is without qualifications, compared to 27 per cent for the white British population.
The abolition of the Learning and Skills Council is making it difficult for businesses to identify any single body where they could get information about skills training, the scrutiny committee was told.
Springfield Liberal Democrat councillor Jerry Evans, who chaired the inquiry, said: “Our key conclusions were that the city’s major weaknesses are low levels of skills and the high level of long-term worklessness.