HR departments and Work Programme providers need to come together to ensure jobless benefit claimants are well placed to gain from available job vacancies.

Speaking ahead of the CIPD conference next week, Dr John Philpott, chief economic adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD), says: “Whatever the state of the UK jobs market in the next few years – on the subject of which I remain less sanguine than government ministers – it is vital that we do everything we can to help jobless benefit claimants into work.

“The argument that ‘there aren’t any jobs’ is just plain wrong. Clearly we need more jobs, and creating the conditions for economic growth is public policy priority number one. But even when the stock of job vacancies is depressed, nationally, regionally, or locally, there is always a constant flow of opportunities coming onto the market. Yet far too often these hundreds of thousands of opportunities bypass the very people, long-term benefit claimants, whom we most desperately want to take advantage of them.”