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Number of teenagers with Saturday job drops

The number of teenagers with Saturday jobs has slumped over the past 15 years, making it harder for young people to acquire experience for their CVs - a crucial step towards getting full-time work, a new report warns.

The proportion of teenagers combining part-time jobs with school or college has slumped from 40% in the 1990s to around 20% now, according to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), a government agency. Latest figures show that 260,000 teenagers have a Saturday job compared with 435,000 in 1997.

The trend is not just recession-related but the result of an increasing expectation that young people should stay on at school, as well as a dwindling number of Saturday jobs, according to the report. Many of the jobs that young people do, such as bar work, are in long-term decline, and are forecast to stagnate or decline further over the next decade.


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"Recruiters place significant emphasis on experience … but young people are leaving education increasingly less experienced," the report says.

Word of mouth is the most common way to get a job, but an increasing shortage of work experience means young people are unable to build up informal contacts, it adds.

Valerie Todd, a commissioner at the UKCES, said: "There's more emphasis on doing well at school, young people are finding less time to do what they would have done a few years ago, whether that's a paper round or working in the local shop.

"I think it's also the changing structure of the labour market. Retail is still a big employer, but a lot more of it is being done online. As a consequence we need to think about how we get young people the work experience they need."

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Todd praised "structured" work experience and visits to schools by employers to give talks about jobs.

The government announced on Monday that it was overhauling the system of funding education after 16, to make it easier for young people to get work experience.

At present schools and colleges are funded per qualification, and there is no incentive to offer activities that do not lead to passing exams. But from September next year, schools and colleges will be funded per student.

Ministers say that students who do not achieve a good grade in English and maths, the subjects most valued by employers, will have to keep studying those subjects until the age of 18. This will be a condition of the funding of post-16 education.

The changes follow a review of vocational education by Professor Alison Wolf of King's College London.

Wolf said: "Employers value high-quality work experience undertaken by students. But the current system makes it far too difficult for many institutions to build this vital aspect into their programmes."

A new initiative to send employees into state schools to talk about their careers was also launched with the backing of Nick Clegg. The scheme, Inspiring the Future, is meant to give state schoolchildren access to the kind of careers advice that private schools offer.

Speaking at the scheme's launch, the deputy prime minister said: "The power of making connections that inspire young people is immeasurable and can be life-changing.

"Many successful people can point to a moment in their lives when they were inspired to become the people they are today. Now, it's their turn to help young people fulfil their potential."