Steven Nuttall is 50 years old, but he's never learned to read and write. Unemployed for the last decade, he's picked up a range of odd-jobs during his life, like selling popcorn and working on the fairgrounds, but never enough to make ends meet. Filling in application forms is a...

Just before the turn of the year the Ministry of Justice and Department for Work and Pensions produced a joint analysis of the criminal records of benefit claimants. This was the first joint report of its kind. If you missed it, some of the headline stats went as follows:

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Neil O'Brien wrote an interesting piece in the Telegraph (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/neilobrien1/100116574/we-should-welcome-this-experiment-with-workfare/) recently, on the announcement by the government (http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/community-work-for-job-seekers/) about the plan to introduce compulsory work experience after Work Programme. I have been involved in delivering, managing and, in some cases, designing community based work experience for nearly 20 years. I...

This week marks the launch of Labour's Business - a snappy pamphlet outlining a clear set of measures the Labour party needs to adopt if it is to start taking enterprise seriously. I am delighted that the editors, Alex Smith and Luke Bozier, offered A4e the chance to be involved,...

In the 20 or so years I have been working to support unemployed people back into work, the political and economic landscape of the UK has changed considerably. After I graduated from university, I was unemployed for a while. Like every young person I had hopes and ambitions. It was...

Another stagnant set of employment figures were released last week and there is rightly a continued focus on education, young people, employment and skills. I was recently a Counsellor at One Young World. This a 'mini-Davos' styled event which brought together 1400 young people from over 170 countries who are...

The UK has just posted another set of dreary employment figures. With public sector job losses hitting the market as local and central government departments adjust to last year's spending review, unemployment is up. Now over 2.5m people are unemployed and youth unemployment is very high. In the US, job...

As the first person in my family to go to University, I left in 1991 in a recession that was just heating up. Unemployment was just over 2.5m, 8.9%, before rising to just short of 3m. Unemployment figures released in the UK on Wednesday (17/08) showed an increase again, to...

A significant number of people who have been unemployed for a year or more have health or social issues that make their return to work more difficult. Figures released recently have suggested that economic and unemployment problems have triggered a 43% rise in prescriptions of anti-depressants in the UK over...