Plan for Jobs Cross-cutting Evaluation Wave 1 and 2 synthesis report

Between March and April 2020, claimant unemployment increased by 69 per cent to 2.1 million as a result of restrictions on business operation and social mixing passed into law in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Scenarios developed by the Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility at this time suggested that the unemployment rate could rapidly increase to 10%. The Government’s Plan for Jobs (PfJ), announced on 8 July 2020 was designed to respond to this increase in unemployment.

More than £7 billion was allocated for measures designed to support the UK labour market. The PfJ also included measures overseen by the Department for Education (DfE) that provided routes into work, apprenticeships, and traineeships. Aspects overseen by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) aimed to help maintain job search intensity for the unemployed, improve job matching and brokerage for employers and jobseekers, and to develop the skills needed to fill vacancies.

This report provides findings from the Plan for Jobs Cross-cutting Evaluation. It considers five strands of DWP provision under the Plan for Jobs (PfJ): Kickstart scheme, Job Finding Support, the Youth Employment programme, Job Entry Targeted Support and increased capacity on the Sector-based Work Academy programmes. Each of these programmes targeted claimants in the Intensive Work Search regime.

This multi-strand evaluation aimed to assess how well DWP’s parts of PfJ were able to respond to the economic shocks caused by the restrictions on social distancing and business operations put in place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluation also aimed to explore how well employment services were joined up and how decisions on referral and targeting were made. The research presents a snapshot of PfJ Participants, looking across the whole support package rather than an in-depth exploration of each strand.