Stevenson Welcomes High Youth Employment Rates

Stewart Stevenson, SNP MSP for Banffshire & Buchan Coast, welcomes data showing that Scotland has the third highest youth employment rate in Europe at 54.6%.

On Wednesday Mr Stevenson asked the Minister for Youth and Women's Employment, Annabelle Ewing, what data there is on how Scotland’s youth employment compares to the rest of the European Union.

The Minister responded:

“The latest data from Eurostat show that Scotland, with a rate of 54.6 per cent, had the third-highest youth employment rate across the European Union countries for quarter 2 of 2015. Only the Netherlands, with a rate of 61.3 per cent, and Denmark, with a rate of 55.9 per cent, were ahead of Scotland.”

Mr Stevenson went on to ask the Minister what investment is being made to try and get Scotland’s youth employment figures to number 1 in Europe.

The minister agreed with Mr Stevenson’s desire to get Scotland to number one and went on to explain the various initiatives that Scottish Government is involved in at the moment to try to achieve this:

“We invested £12 million last year and we have invested £16.6 million this year in embedding our developing the young workforce principles and policies. We have also provided more than 25,000 modern apprenticeship starts year on year, and some 101,000 modern apprenticeship opportunities have been delivered in the current parliamentary session. We have ambitions to go further and secure 30,000 modern apprenticeships starts by 2020.

“We are going in the right direction, but we recognise that we have more to do.”