Hertfordshire already has a higher employment rate than the Government's national target in the Get Britain Working white paper, county councillors heard.

The Get Britain Working initiative set out a requirement for local areas to develop their own local employment plan – in this case, "Get Hertfordshire Working" – which must be submitted to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) with a focus on reducing joblessness.

Hertfordshire Futures, formerly known as the Hertfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership, has been responsible for drafting the plan.

A report into the plan prepared by Norman Jennings, deputy director of economy and skills, was presented to the economic, growth and transport cabinet panel and set out some employment statistics.

The report stated: "Overall, Hertfordshire has a high employment rate, that is 80.6%; it is close to (but slightly higher than) the rate that has been set as the national target in the Get Britain Working White Paper, i.e. 80%.

"There are currently about 130,000 economically inactive people (aged 16-64) in Hertfordshire. Of these, around 29% are students; 28% are 'looking after family/home'; 17% are 'long term sick'; 3% are 'temporary sick'; and 10% are retired.

"Among those who are economically inactive, we estimate 15,000-25,000 individuals want a job and might be able to work if various barriers are addressed. This is a key statistic in terms of the Get Hertfordshire Working Plan – and identifying ways of appropriately supporting those 15,000-25,000 people will be a priority.

"Compared to elsewhere, Hertfordshire's challenges with inactivity are less acute. However, three important points also need to be made:

⦁ Issues around worklessness continue to be very problematic indeed for many individuals and their families

⦁ Many of those who are in work, experience poverty because of the high cost of living locally – hence progressing in jobs is really important locally.

⦁ Employers struggle to recruit and retain staff in a very tight labour market.

Responding to the report, Cllr Alistair Willoughby said: "Obviously, we're not having our industries shouted out about and so actually, I think there's a lot of people who live in our county who might be interested in going into some of those industries."

Cllr Paula Hiscocks said: "The emphasis is, as you were saying, on young people. I know we're trying to get those who are not into education, employment or training figures better, but they are still high.

"Looking at this report, there's an increase in our 20 to 24 age range, which is really worrying. By the time people get to their late 30s or 40s, you know, the rot's sort of set in. One of the things which young people used to have, which is not so prevalent now, is Saturday jobs and jobs after school.

"My own daughter worked in our library on a Saturday and went on to university, and worked part-time in the library there. It was a really good training exercise and I don't know how we can encourage this with our employers to take on our young people from the age of 16 on Saturday, part-time or after-school jobs?"

Mr Jennings responded: "Obviously, we want to encourage that. What I do know is that our further education colleges will run little job centres, so if there are vacancies, particularly for part-time work for their students, then they promote that to those students.

"So I know that is happening across our four further education colleges, obviously, that only deals with people who are in further education.

"Taking on the wider bit about working and young people, and the experience of work, actually, I think we need to start addressing this at an earlier stage, and I think it's about work experience while people are in education, whether that's in school or colleges.

"A particular focus for us as we move forward with our careers and enterprise work will be on work experience, and promoting more realistic and more valuable work experience for young people in education, to understand the importance of work, what the labour market is looking for and what those opportunities are."