Recession 'not entirely bleak'

By Chris Smith Newsbeat reporter in Hull

Young people are the hardest hit by the recession. New figures show 1,000 people under 25 are losing their jobs every day. 2.3 million people are now out of work in the UK, the highest level for 14 years. One of the people in charge of sorting our economy is business secretary Lord Mandelson. He reckons getting green is one way forward.

Lord Mandelson says there are opportunities for under-25s

We've been talking to young job seekers in Hull and there are lots of concerns about unemployment but you're talking about a low carbon ecomony. Why is that?

What we want to do as a government is think long-term, think where the growth markets are going to be, the industries that are going to expand and where the jobs are going to be created. Those, above all, are being driven by changing technologies but also transformative things like the transition to a low carbon economy.

And this will create jobs will it?

Yes, of course it will. There's getting on for a million jobs in the low carbon sector already. We think that if our investments that we've announced today go ahead as planned, and we expect them to do so, we see another 400, 500,000 jobs being created in our economy up until 2015.

What you're getting is a lot of industries and businesses need to convert, they need to change to lower carbon and lower cost means of production but also producing new goods and services and technologies which enable us to run and operate a low carbon energy source, a low carbon economy as a whole.

It's going to involve a lot of change for existing industries, but also new ones and in the long-term it's going to make our energy supply more diverse, more safe, more secure and cheaper. It's going to have a big effect on many other parts of industry as well.

Some of the younger job seekers we've been talking to in Hull are concerned in the short-term, not the long-term. How can young job seekers who haven't got any experience find a good job?

Lord Mandelson promotes green energy at a Surrey factory

That's the reason why the government in our response to the recession, rather than just losing a whole generation of young people to work as we have seen in previous recessions we've gone through, we're creating opportunities of work experience, training, of exposure to work environments so that young people can gain the experience they need to qualify for existing jobs and new ones that are going to be created in the future.

So we're very, very alert to this. Next week you'll find, when the Cabinet meets in Cardiff, that we're going to be announcing further ideas we have and we're going to be building up progress and activity in extending our offer to young people over the summer and the autumn.

A thousand under-25s are losing their jobs every day. How are you going to stop that?

Yes, but also under-25s are going into jobs. It's right to focus because we're very concerned about people who are losing jobs but there are also young people who are moving into jobs along with other age groups in our society. So it is not entirely bleak but it is difficult. A recession is a recession.

That means contract and demand. It means businesses downsizing and losing employees. But it's not all bad news. There are also jobs being created in our economy. What young people need though are the skills, the qualifications, the experience to get into them.

Do you think young people will have confidence that you've got what it takes to give them those skills and experience and those jobs?

We've hugely increased our ability to train young people and to equip them with skills. That has been building ever since we came into office as a government. We have a much bigger training capacity than we've ever had in our country before.

We have a larger further education sector, opportunities on courses and places for young people at FE colleges, and of course our higher education sector has expanded as well.

That's not to say that there will not be pressures on spending and our investment in these and other areas but we know what we've got to prioritise and we know what we've got to protect if we're going to remain a strong economy and this whole area is chief amongst them.