Pat McFadden | Youth Unemployment, Apprenticeships, and How AI Will Change Work

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0:34Sign up now at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA. Select schools available. Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max$100 cash back per month. Welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Today, I am joined by Pat McFadden, who is the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He has been at the heart of the Labour Party for decades, having worked with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the last Labour government. There is a jobs crisis in the UK with one in eight under 24 out of work or education. It is something that we talk about on LinkedIn all the time, about what a massive challenge this is.

1:10Pat comes on to today's show to talk about some of the plans that they have got to try and fix this, in terms of businesses being able to get£5 ,000 for potentially taking on apprentices. I hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I did recording it. Well, Pat, welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Feature. We were just talking about first jobs, so let's start there. What was your first job? Well, it's good to be here with you and your listeners. My first job was age 13 when I did a paper round in Govan Hill in Glasgow. And I used to go down there about six o 'clock in the morning before school.

1:46I was getting paid£4 a week. and the news agent he kept sleeping in so I would knock the window and he'd get up and put his teeth in while he sorted the newspapers and I delivered them before school and then I went back there after school and Glasgow Evening Papers the Evening Times and I would deliver the Evening Times so I did it twice a day for for the week and I got four pounds. One of the reasons I love asking the question is you clearly have very very distinct memories of it like to the point where he's putting his teeth in as well that first transaction i think of when somebody swaps time for money is fascinating right it is yeah i remember getting a rise to four pound fifty by the time i've left i think i think so and i suppose i might be a bit old-fashioned about it this sense of obligation independence yeah that gave me a bit of pocket money basically at the time what did you used to spend it on oh god i was 13 when i was 13 year olds you know spend it on pop magazines and uh football magazines and things like that but they always feel so much better when you've earned the the money for it and you were you were one of seven yes growing up right so what did your siblings go on to do etc well my mom and dad were irish immigrants they came from Donegal in the 1950s.

3:15They were native Irish speakers, only learned English during the course of growing up. But when they came to Glasgow, they still spoke Gaelic between themselves, but they didn't teach us Gaelic. So I know a few words, but I can't speak it. They had seven children. My dad, like many Irish men of his generation, worked in building trades on building sites. my mum worked in a local authority children's home overnight, she used to work night shift four nights a week so she'd get the bus to the children's home to start about 10 o 'clock at night and she'd finish breakfast time and come home and go to bed for a few hours my older siblings I'm the youngest they're quite international they're all over the world and they're older than me so they're mostly retired now.

4:11But for example, my oldest brother Danny was a schoolteacher. My sister Sheila, she waited tables in the Hyatt Hotel in Lake Tahoe for a long time. But then she, in her late 30s, turning 40, she went back to college, trained, and then became a schoolteacher herself. My brother Seamus in the States, he went into teaching too. My brother Brian worked for Royal Mail. my sister worked in housing associations in Glasgow my brother Huey he works for the United States Army out in Germany as a civilian okay because they have some bases in Germany and he's done that for a long time so a wide variety of wide variety public service sort of focus there and so what do you think sort of drew you to the sort of the the center of power because most of your jobs have been in politics, right?

5:12Yes. Scottish politics with Donald Dewar and then John Smith and Tony Blair. What sort of drew you there? I was just interested as a young person and I got a bit involved in it. I got a phone call one day from someone at the Scottish Labour Party and said, Donald Dewar is looking for a researcher. I'd never met Donald Dewar and he was this big gangly guy that I'd seen on TV and he met me for a cup of tea in what was then called the North British Hotel, which is, you know, you wouldn't call it that these days. So I had a pot of tea with him. I was very nervous. I think I was just graduating. And he offered me a gig for a few months and it really went from there.

6:03And I stayed involved working in politics more or less. ever since. But before that you were also saying you had a job as a dishwasher Yeah I did lots of things after the paper round. I stacked shelves in a couple of supermarkets when I was about 17 18 I did night shift. I used to do it in the co-op in Shawlands in Glasgow one night overnight Friday night through to Saturday morning. I did that in a couple of different supermarkets I did job in gardening when I was a student a couple of Edinburgh festival jobs I worked there and one of the jobs I did have was as a dishwasher in I think it was Scotland's first Mexican restaurant it was called Viva Mexico in Coburn Street in Edinburgh and I inherited the job from Scotland's current First Minister John Swinney who'd been doing it before that I think he's a year or two older than me and he was giving up for some reason I don't know if he was graduating or something But I took over his job.

7:07So quite a political line of dishwashers in Diva Mexico. And what did you do at the Edinburgh Fringe as well? Because that must have been quite interesting. Well, obviously, it's a big thing in the city of the year. I sold tickets for an exhibition one summer. I was an usher at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival. It creates all these short-time temporary jobs, and I did a couple of those over the years. hearing pat talk about working at the edinburgh fringe and his first job washing dishes alongside the scottish first minister john swinney makes you realize how much that first step into the world of work matters that brings me neatly onto one of our partners for this episode mcdonald's UK.

7:55Every year McDonald's gives thousands of young people that first opportunity of a start. In fact they have hired over 47 ,000 young people in the UK in the last year alone and if anyone says young people can't manage responsibility one in three McDonald's managers is under the age of 25 in the UK. It's all part of their focus highlighting resilience and leadership in the next generation back to the episode with Pam on the today program on Monday you were being sort of challenged quite a lot by um Amol about the the long-term challenges in the labor market that's what you were talking about and I didn't really feel like you got the space to sort of go into it but one of those things that I think we are lacking at the moment is a bit of the the Saturday job it's one of those things that sort of disappears from it I think there's a challenge because there isn't as much sort of short-term labor opportunity moments for people right is that something you sort of agree i agree i think it's been happening for a long time we began the discussion with talking about that sense of being able to go out with some sense of obligation get some money yeah you know i used to like when i did the night shift in the co-op and it was in those, these were all pre-minimum wage days.

9:20So wages were lower for those kind of jobs. But at the co-op, I think I was getting sort of 20 pounds, 20 something pounds, which felt like, that felt like a bit of money. And it was my own thing. And by the time, this time I'm 17, 18, I can buy my own clothes a little bit. And so I'm not really reliant on my mum. And I think it's unfortunate that that opportunity just seems to be less available than it used to be. In my job, you see lots of charts and slides, and we might get into some of this, but this category of people called not in education, employment or training, of whom there are about just under a million, right now it's about one in eight young people in England, over half of them have never had a job.

10:08They've never had that sense of obligation and a little bit of pride that comes with doing that. So I am concerned about that, just the experience of doing it. When you say you felt it was an obligation, I mean, I'm not saying that your dad passed away when you were 14. Yeah. Right, so you probably felt an extra kind of responsibility. I don't know. There was no economic pressure on me from my mum to do this. Don't get me wrong. We were perfectly well looked after, and she was still working the overnight. in the in the night shift so it wasn't that i had to go out for the sake of the family but it gave me a bit of independence as a youngster it was yeah more like that it's funny so i'll tell you what my dad's line on this was to me he was always like he had to work his dad died when he was seven and he was like he had to work all the way through pretty much lots of part-time jobs and so on he was always like no son of mine is going to have to work etc whilst at school and whatever at 16 he rapidly changed his mind and was like actually i think it'd be quite good for you to get a job and get that sort of independence and i do think earning that money when it's your own it just makes a huge kind of it just makes a huge difference do you think people have become it's not too reliant on the state but it's it's looking to the state to kind of help and intervene before they can assess what they do you can't tar everybody the same here look most young people are still, their lives are still some form of education, then maybe some form of higher education or training, then a job.

11:47That is still the usual path for most young people. But there is a group here, that one in eight, that I'm really concerned about. And there's some things going on with graduate unemployment too, which we might come on to. So I think for most people, they still have a good job and career path. but there is a there's obviously a particular issue with youth inactivity youth unemployment and youth sickness yeah which i'm personally concerned about and that's why in the first few months i've been in this job if you ask anyone who works at the dwp what what do you think pat's priority is i hope they know it's young people in work yeah because that's what I've focused on, that's what I've tried to do.

12:38And there's an obvious good reason to focus on young people, which is if they go down the wrong path, if they end up being dependent on benefits at a young age and it becomes long-term, the consequences for them can be really bad. Worse health, worse mental health, even a likelihood of dying before their peers is what I call stickiness. in the system and the research people in the department gave me an extraordinary statistic in the run-up to a speech i made a few days ago where they told me that a young person on the health element of universal credit which is the long-term sickness element is less likely to get a job now if they're under 25 than somebody on the same benefit if they're over 55 so there are very good rational reasons for me to focus my attention and effort on getting young people into some kind of constructive work or training or other positive economic activity how much of it there is a cultural issue in the sense of that like i think a question sometimes how much government can do with this, right?

13:59How much of it is a kind of responsibility you mentioned earlier as well for people to go out and find a job, etc. How much of this is a cultural issue? I don't know about cultural issue. I want to make it a cause. And I want to make it a cause beyond government. Government can't do everything. We can, obviously we're responsible for lots of parts of the economic environment, but not all of it we live in a market economy so there's a message to business here too um and there are certain what we did this week or what i did this week was try to put in place some economic incentives for business to hire young people because every hire is a bit of a risk you don't know what you're going to get you don't know if it's going to work out um and so what we offered in policy terms was for a business taking on a young unemployed person by that I mean somebody who's been on universal credit for six months or more we'll give them three thousand pounds as a hiring bonus and for a young apprentice for a small business small or medium-sized business we'll give them two thousand pounds to take on that young apprentice and if the young apprentice has been out of work for six months, you can get the£2 ,000 and the£3 ,000.

15:20So you get£5 ,000, you can add these things up. Now, what is the intent behind that? It is to create more youth apprenticeships, certainly, and to, in the marginal decision of, am I going to hire somebody or who should I hire to have a financial incentive in there to hire a young person? And what I wanted to do was, in a sense, bring business into this effort and conversation and say, look, let's work on this together. Because it's not in the country's interest to have almost a million young people not engaged in any positive economic activity. What do you say to businesses that say, but, you know, over the last five years, national minimum wage has gone up, this government have brought up next.

16:09and to be fair, it was the Conservatives that hiked a lot of the national minimum wage as well. It's become almost 50 % more expensive to hire somebody at the lower end with all these costs. So this only equates to what was before. These things are costs. Any tax, any wage is a cost to business. It's part of the calculation, but it's not the whole calculation. And I suppose maybe this sounds about party political, but if it was all about the last couple of years, this problem would only have appeared in the last couple of years, but that's not true. The neat numbers, it's not a pretty phrase, I almost don't like using it, but the neat numbers have been going up for five years.

16:56And the steepest part of the rise was actually before we came into office. So there's been something going on. If you take retail jobs, you talked about Saturday jobs a few minutes ago. So employment and retail has been going down for 10 years. The issue of young sickness, which is a growing proportion of youth inactivity, is about 10 years old as well, and it's started to come up. And it's really gone up a lot in the last five years. This is a post-COVID thing going on. So governments have to make decisions about tax levels. We are on the minimum wage front. You know, we, on my side of the aisle, we're very proud of the minimum wage.

17:43We introduced it. Lots of people said it would be a bad thing to do economically. I don't feel that's been the case over the 20, 25 years that we've had it. Perhaps not surprising that we want people to be decently paid. But I understand, having said all that, that any hire is a risk. And what I'm trying to do is send a signal to business. in the policies I've announced this week that we want you to give young people a chance and we'll help you out a bit financially with these hiring incentives, either on the apprenticeship side or the regular job side. Quite often when I was in number 10 doing the business relations job, I was surprised with how many businesses would say that they had liked the minimum wage going up because it's sort of, and the minimum wage being there because it's sort of taken the decision out of their hands about what they should pay people.

18:34It was just something kind of counterintuitive you that you might not hear. Which businesses do you think are doing a good job of making good jobs? Because I'm always struck that it is something that particularly matters on the left and the left of centre is this idea of a good job is particularly important. I suppose the first question really is how would you define a good job? What is a good job? I don't think it's a sort of sectoral thing. I think it's a sense of pride in what you're doing. Some of the most inspiring experiences I've had in the last few months have just been going out around the country and seeing some of the young apprentices.

19:16So to give you a couple of examples, I met young apprentices at Camel Laird Shipyard in Birkenhead. They are building the first new ferry across the Mersey for 60 years, and it's sitting there in the dock. That was wonderful. the apprentices tfl have got this big acton works in west london where they maintain service all the tube trains they've got fantastic apprenticeship courses where people will be trained on the brakes on the wheels on the different parts of the train and the supervisor said to me by the end of their course they should basically be able to take a tube train apart and put it together again with their bare hands.

19:58That is simply wonderful. These are great jobs. And the sense of pride and achievement among these young apprentices when they're working there is great. So I see examples all the time. I'm a West Midlands MP. I represent Wolverhampton Southeast. And although this country doesn't make as much as it used to, We make more than we think. And the story of this death of manufacturing, I think, is overdone. And when I go around my constituency, we still have lots of fairly anonymous-looking sheds in industrial estates around Bilston, where they're doing great things. And it probably surprised some of your listeners.

20:51Maybe your listeners watch the job market more. We've got 50 ,000 vacancies in manufacturing right now in the country. And the employers are saying to me, we just need the skills and the right people to do them. And quite often it's an older workforce. And they want young people to go into these things. So I'm not saying the only good job is a manufacturing job. But I think there are really positive careers out there. And here we are, we're speaking about this in London, in the centre of the most amazing, creative, innovative city where people are doing all sorts of things. Let's talk a little bit about AI and jobs, because I often think the Labour Party was founded on the course of labour, workers, etc.

21:37Now, if some of these predictions are right about there are going to be no jobs and there is going to be no work and AI is going to take it all, what do you think that means for the future of the centre-left? I think AI is very good for the podcast industry. I think, you know, I listen to, you know, if I'm allowed to mention others, I listen to Ezra Klein talking to Jack Clark. I think it's probably also good for the consulting industry. There's loads of reports out there. I suspect there's a bit of kind of tech moonshine around about some of these predictions. I don't think anyone knows. So my basic view is technological advance is unstoppable.

22:19There's no point in sticking our heads in the sand and wishing it wasn't there. There's no doubt that this technology will replace jobs, destroy some jobs, but I believe it will also create others, probably in ways that we cannot predict. and we don't know. And the only rational response for any country here is to say, well, how are we going to use this? How can we make use of it? So a couple of examples in my sort of area of the forest. If you go to your GP now, I don't know about your particular GP, but a number of them will say, do you mind if the notes are taken by AI? To which I always say, no, that's fine.

23:04and they say, that means I can focus on you as a patient. We can do a similar thing in job centres where a lot of the activity of the job coaches up until now has been speaking to somebody and then spending a while writing it up. Now, you still have to have the human element to make sure you've got your facts right and it didn't get their name wrong or stuff like that. But I think there's huge capacity for AI to enhance the human element of work. Now, I'm not panglossing about it. I think a big technological force like this is going to be destructive as well as creative. But I think it will be both.

23:42And I think the only rational response for the UK is to grab it with both hands to equip our people as much as possible with how to use it to enhance the productivity and enhance what they do at work. and on the industrial policy side to try to make sure the UK is a good home for investment into it. I am, on the whole, optimistic about this. I mentioned creativity and innovation. That is something this country is very good at, from the music industry right through to design to a whole lot of other spheres. So whatever's in the juices and the DNA in the UK, I think, can be put to good use in the AI world.

24:27Yeah, I mean, you sort of joked about podcasting, but I do talk about it here. We've got five or six people. This couldn't have been a job seven years ago, really. And we've been able to kind of create these things and build a kind of mini-media, I wouldn't say empire, but a mini-media brand town, perhaps. Yeah, I think that's kind of really inspiring for people to be able to think of it like that. I often ask people what they would do today if they were kind of graduating. I assume that you would say still go into politics, right? oh i don't know i just wanted to say a quick thanks to amazon for supporting this episode now when we talk about jobs of the future we often focus on the technical and the cutting edge but actually one of the most important things that any economy needs is a strong starting point for people that's where amazon comes in for thousands of people across the uk amazon is a genuine gateway into the workforce offering around 30 000 in starting pay and benefits from day one but What's really interesting is how they're breaking down barriers too.

25:26They've created over 5 ,500 apprenticeships since 2013, 1 ,000 of those coming in 2025 alone. They're also the UK's largest private provider of supported internships, helping young people with learning disabilities into meaningful employment. Check out the Jimmy's Jobs of the Future interview we did with John Bonfrey, where we went behind the scenes of an Amazon Fulfillment Centre. Links to that episode below. I often ask people what they would do today if they were kind of graduating I assume that you would say still go into politics right oh I don't know if you had your time again that's a great question of the ages but today if you were sort of graduating in the 2020s well that will still will AI replace the politicians I don't know if it will I never had you know people use this phrase this is what brought me into politics I've never really been able to use that phrase because it wasn't always a determined career path or pre-thought set of choices.

26:27For me, often one job led to another and one thing led to another. But I think there's loads of things. What would I do if I was graduating today? I would be optimistic. I know life's tough and people are applying for lots of jobs and so on, but we're living in such a fantastic country. It is creative, it is innovative. I don't know if I'd pick exactly the same thing, but... What did you study? I'm afraid I did study politics. Yeah, a long, long time ago at Edinburgh. And it was fantastic, it really opened my eyes. Not to be too kind of romantic about this, but this was in the 1980s when working class people at universities were pretty rare.

27:17And I remember going to Edinburgh and just noticing the physical size of the people at that university at that time, especially the men, these big guys. And I was just looking at these. And that was partly... I had not mixed with people like that before ever. So it brought me into a whole different set of social circles. and it's the untangible, unquantifiable benefit of going on to higher education or at least leaving your hometown and going somewhere else and doing something else. You just meet people you wouldn't otherwise have met and I think for a lot of working class kids, social confidence is an issue.

28:06It's still an issue today and confidence, how can you put a price on that? so that experience of having to teach yourself you can be in a room with these people and you can you can speak up for yourself that doesn't always come naturally and it doesn't come instantly i remember going to see my director of studies after a few months and saying to him i'm not sure this is for me um you know i feel a bit fish out of water here and he gave me great advice he said listen I've experienced this kind of conversation a couple of times before you've only been here for two or three months give it give it a year give it to the summer complete your first year and I think you'll be okay because everyone I think has that sort of imposter syndrome two three months into any major job life change and so on right well I can't speak for everyone maybe they maybe they do but the thing is to believe in yourself and back yourself and keep going which is easier said than done sometimes but you've got to do it how else did you develop that sort of social confidence very slowly it's the truth um and uh i still you know in the political world look at people and think they are so confident in what they're saying it's so sure of themselves often when they're talking complete nonsense um so i'm not sure that ever i think it's a big thing for people from different backgrounds i also think that the importance that you touch on there of going to a different place yeah it's quite important as well to buy that confidence and get that get into a new place get integrated and so like i think it's a it's an underestimated thing it is one of the problems i think with university fees and i understand why people are living at home and studying at university but i also think there is no replacement for that you know you you've got to go there and sort of work out a new town, new city and so on.

30:10It was great for me. And in Glasgow, Glasgow has this tradition long before fees of home study. Well, they've got a different system in Scotland anyway, of course, but most kids at Glasgow schools who went to university tended to go to, they had a different application process in my day, I don't know if that still exists, where you could apply directly to Glasgow or Strathclyde University, whereas for the others you had to go through this UCAS system. But I decided, I don't really know why, at age 17, 18, I'd quite like to try and leave Glasgow. Maybe it was because I had older siblings who'd travelled a bit and they'd gone round Europe backpacking and so on.

30:57And I thought, I didn't go very far. I mean, I went to Edinburgh. But I'd only been to Edinburgh twice in my life before turning up there as a student. And once was just a couple of months before it where I went to see David Bowie at Murrayfield Stadium and his Let's Dance tour, which ages me. But it was fantastic. He was wearing this sort of sky blue suit, remember. But I'd never really been to Edinburgh. I hadn't experienced it. And to go there, different city, different vibe, even though it's only 40 miles, was a fantastic experience. um and what do you think's changed in the 40 years of politics oh god like and and i guess how has the how have the jobs changed in politics like what is the yeah what is the role of politicians and now that's interesting your kind of reflections the obvious changes on the media side are first you had 24-hour news i remember i used to work at number 10 for tony blair way back in the and we'd talk about 24-hour news and say, you know, it's made everybody impatient.

32:05They want an instant answer. I mean, little did we know what was coming. And then, of course, the other big change is the social media world, which has had all sorts of impacts, most of them negative from my point of view. But that, again, may reflect time of life. I think the amplification of algorithmic-driven views. So if you're leaning right, it sends you lots of right-wing stuff. If you're leaning left, it sends you lots of left-wing stuff, driving attention, the demand for your attention. And where does reason and centre-left or centre-right debate stand in a world that's driven by attention?

32:56I think it's had a huge impact. In a micro way, there are those who would say it's impacted Parliament itself because a debate is now less of a debate and it's more a series of individual social media clips. Clips, yeah. And you don't really get the back and forth. Now, I don't know if there's a bit of nostalgia around that, but very often we have these oral question sessions, as you'll know, where one day it will be, say, health questions and another day DWP questions or whatever. Quite a lot of the MPs taking part on all sides of the house are making social media clips, really. So I think it's been a huge change in politics.

33:39And on subject to just finish, I think when I was growing up, politics was largely economic, fiscal. Elections were tax and spend elections. fought out in quite familiar Labour Tory territory. The big change, I think, has been the entrance onto the stage of other issues such as nationalism, the big concern with immigration, culture wars, all of that, things that are not the economic fiscal tax and spend issues on issues terms, that's been the biggest change. Do you think there'd be any advantage to going back and turning the cameras off in the House of Commons? I don't think you could do that because people have got a right to, obviously they want to see.

34:32Do you mean cameras off and keeping the sound? Yeah, definitely. Because I agree, it seems like a bit of a clip farm. It is a bit of a clip farm. Was there ever a golden age? I don't know. Is it nostalgia that makes us think there was a golden age? I would like because there was definitely in the noughties you would often get people sort of even at PMQs and whatever getting up and being like well the Prime Minister congratulate my under nines football team in my constituency for local media so like it's there's definitely there's always been an element of that but I do agree that there doesn't it seems to be almost people just getting up and treating it like a studio at the moment yeah there's a lot of that and the issues are tough you know they need debate but I don't think we should probably get her in our high horse too much about it social media has definitely driven it to to be more clips yeah uh it would be nice to have real back and forth debate yeah do what we can what is your advice for the younger mps that have just sort of entered coming up to their two-year anniversary now some of it's personal some of it is not to be sucked into this too much and think that the world is social media.

35:48Look after yourselves. Have a balance. Things like that. You've got the right to say no. That's one of the things I say to... When you're a new MP, you want to say absolutely yes to everything because the last thing you want is people in the constituency say, oh, that new MP, we invited him to that thing on Sunday and he never came. You don't want that. So you say yes to absolutely everything. I think after you've been doing it for a while, you have to temper that. remember it's okay to have a day with your family uh it's okay to say no as well as to say yes um and on the the sort of disciplined side of it um a lot of people will want your time and your imprint on their cause or their thing you have to exercise some discipline there and say is that is that really what i want to use my time for everybody you know there's been a lot of discussion about money and politics uh but actually the the real precious currency that no mp can create more of is time and time management is so important to what has changed in terms of government because you're one of sort of a handful of mps ed milliband yvette cooper that were there in the last government as well um what has or hasn't changed about sort of government when you kind of came in last year again i get asked this one of variations and that one quite a lot when i was in government last time social media didn't really exist yeah i left government in 2010 it might have been in its very early stage it didn't really exist it's massive now um and to put it at its most delicate the international situation is somewhat more volatile and unpredictable uh those are probably the the two biggest differences and there's a notion of speed which I think is maybe a new factor in that people are frustrated, they want results, they're quite right to want results.

37:53There is an issue of delivery and speed and getting things done which is a challenge to politicians and I don't want to moan about the machine but there's no doubt that the issue of speed is a thing in politics now. But it's also something that Keir Starmer has identified, right? You used that rather sort of striking phrase of the civil service being in a warm, tepid bath at times. And it was one of the things when I was there was there was always a reason not to do something. You could always find a reason not to do something on any given day. Do you think we have become a bit too risk averse?