23 November 2004 - Tackling ethnic minority unemployment
The Government has announced plans to tackle low ethnic minority employment levels.
The announcement was made during the launch of the first Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force annual report by Alan Johnson, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Set up to deliver the first cross-Government ethnic minority employment strategy, the Task Force aims to tackle issues such as lack of access to guidance and advice on training and employment, under-attainment at school and discrimination.
Statistics show the ethnic minority employment gap is narrowing but continues to lag behind the overall population. Currently 59.4 per cent of ethnic minorities are in employment compared to 74.9 per cent for the overall population.
Ethnic minorities also earn less than their white counterparts.
In the past year, activities aimed at addressing the problems have included:
- The Department for Education and Skills' Aiming High Strategy, which provides help for ethnic minority pupils, their teachers and their parents – representing a key step forward in improving the employability of ethnic minorities
- Help from the New Deal to get more than 125,000 ethnic minority people into work
- Ethnic minority outreach work with community organisations, finding innovative ways to connect ethnic minority people with jobs with an extra £14m funding to do this
But the Government intends to do more.
Next year the Task Force will look to:
- Ensure skills policies and programmes take the needs of ethnic minority communities into account
- Find more and better ways of reaching people who are not active in the labour market
- Find ways to ensure that guidance on how public procurement can be used to promote race equality is put into practice
- Encourage businesses to take the lead
- Look at ethnic minority rates of progression and pay within work
- Undertake further programmes of research
Jane Kennedy, who chairs the Task Force, said: “The groundwork has been laid in the first year of the Task Force. Now all Government departments and employers need to forge ahead and work together to ensure nobody is disadvantaged in their career prospects because of their ethnicity."
The Minister was speaking at an event attended by Ministers from the Home Office, Department for Trade and Industry, Department for Education and Skills and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, as well as business representatives, the Trades Union Congress, the Confederation of British Industry and the Commission for Racial Equality.
- Read the full Task Force report (1.78MB)
