Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

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1:00Welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. We are here for a special episode with new Prime Minister Andy Burnham to talk to him about the youth unemployment crisis in Britain. There are over a million under 24s not in education, employment or training. We're sitting down with him in only his second interview as Prime Minister to talk about how he plans to tackle this scourge on our economy. What is he going to do for these 18 to 24 year olds to get them an experience of the workplace. We'll be here talking to him about what the most underappreciated skills in the workforce are. What he's looking for when he's hiring.

1:36How do you get a job with the Prime Minister? I'm Jimmy McLaughlin and this is Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Come inside with me to 10 Downing Street to talk to the Prime Minister. This episode of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future is supported by LinkedIn. Now LinkedIn has 1.3 billion people on its platform including most recently our guest today Andy Burnham who joined last month demonstrating its growing importance. They have a unique insight into what is going on in the jobs and employment market. It's become the go-to place for everyone from job seekers right through to government to understand how the world of work is changing.

2:16More on them later in the episode. Prime Minister welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Thank you. You have made several major announcements today about education and employment. Why does this issue matter so much to you? We're only on week two here. We are only on week two, but I wanted to get stuck into this straight away. I just don't feel we've got an education system that offers a path for everybody. It's our focus on the university route, and that's great for those who want to go on that route, but there's a lot of young people who are looking for something different, and school often isn't giving them that something different.

2:54So it is a huge priority for me. When you've been the mayor of a big city region like Greater Manchester, you just see how our economy can't function if you have an education system that doesn't work to support all parts of the economy, get all young people engaged. So it's a passion of mine, and it's great to be in a position now to really pull the levers to fix it. Talk to us about your early career, because sometimes your typecast is this kind of professional politician who went from Cambridge to a researcher for an MP, a special advisor, member of Parliament. But that's not actually true, is it?

3:33There's a bit of a gap there that people don't talk about. There is. Sea container world? There is, yeah, and even before that. So I went to Cambridge from the North West and described the imposter syndrome and finally got over that and managed to get through my degree, but then went back with the full intention of living and working in Manchester you know I was a product of the Manchester scene of the 80s loved everything about the city but it was at such a low ebb at that time looked everywhere for a job the only thing I could find was as an unpaid reporter on the Middleton Guardian and that was my very first job and there's only so long you can be an unpaid reporter on a regional newspaper so it it kind of really stuck with me all my life but to get on in life I had to leave where I'd grown up and the injustice of that kind of rankled um so yeah I've never forgotten that experience it was then a job on a transport magazine that you mentioned that took me to to London which wasn't the job I wanted so I was in my early 20s it's very much I think in tune with your podcast thinking well how do I get into the job I want the 1992 general election happened and I was just certain the country was going to vote Labour and it didn't and I was at that point thinking well I just want to get into working in politics and it wasn't a straight route at all but then fortune took me there.

5:02Did you feel like you were sort of drifting in those early years yeah definitely my early 20s in london i mean it was a great place to be and i was don't get me wrong i was having a good a good time playing a lot of football and doing a lot of other things uh but yeah i didn't feel like i was you know hitting the mark from a career point of view because bear in mind i had been at cambridge and i was with lots of people that had very connected parents so the people i've been at university with were just walking straight into internships at the times and placements at the bbc and into goldman sachs and other things whereas you know i didn't have that and my dad had always said to me oh cambridge university it will just throw all the doors open to you because i he had to persuade me to go what i realized was when you kind of live through it it's actually connected parents that often make the difference.

6:00And, you know, I've always been a politician that's fought to change that. So how do we change that? You've got to build social capital around young people as they grow up. You've got to give them doors that are open for them to walk through. So as the mayor of Greater Manchester, I haven't done it yet in this job, but I used to offer work shadowing every week so a young person they could just apply via the website and they could just i i said to them look i don't want you opening the post in the corner come and stand right on my shoulder all day and watch what i'm doing and talk to me about it and then you can put that on your cv it's just that foot in the door isn't it a lot of kids from a background where they don't have those connections in their family life how do they get to do something like that so i would put the call out via this podcast anybody in a senior position in any walk of life in britain should offer work shadowing just let a young person from particularly from a background that might not be connected to yours just come in and just be in the room because they do i think feel that imposter syndrome and they think well i can't be here but the truth is they can be there once they are in the room and they can see how it works and then that confidence can build.

7:21I think it's such an important thing. What do you look for when you hire? You bring people in work shadowing, but you're known as building teams around you as the mayor of Greater Manchester. What skills are you looking for? I like people who've got a sense of why they're in that room, what they want to do, and they've got something about them, something they want to change or something they feel is not right and therefore they're coming in to make a difference. That's what I look for. And often you see quite a differentiation for people who are playing the sort of ambition game and those who are playing the change game.

7:56And I know it's the change makers. Very true in politics. What's a skill we perhaps underappreciate in the workforce, do you think? What's something that we don't recognise as well as we might? Walking in somebody else's shoes. You know, I kind of feel the culture often is people just go up and up and then they almost think that they have to look down on everybody once they've got up to a senior position. But I would say true leadership is about being able to walk in the shoes of everybody within your organisation, seeing the perspective of everyone in the world that you're in and then making decisions that sort of reflect your understanding of that.

8:35It's about, when people ask me about this, I would always say leadership is about having a big ambition that people can sort of buy into there was a saying down in Westminster like the clever clogs people down here always used to say under promise and over deliver and I say well why who gets excited by an under promise it's such a self-serving thing isn't it I'll yeah I'll make a sort of a sort of small commitment and I might exceed a small commitment well how's that going to change the world. You've got to have a big vision, a big sort of idea about what should change. And then people will buy into that.

9:15And then you build a team underneath it by being prepared to walk in other's shoes. And that's always been my approach. Do you think we need to be a bit more ambitious as a country? And that's to business owners and entrepreneurs as well. I think we need to be more ambitious for all parts of the country. And this is a criticism that I'm making and is why I've set up Number 10 North. I don't think the country has had an ambition for Derby. I think where you are from, for Manchester even, until devolution, the country didn't say, oh, we want Manchester to be this and that in the future. Liverpool, it had a managed decline in the 80s.

9:54That, I think, is something that we've got to change. There is potential in every postcode in Britain. And yet, down here, I don't think people have thought like that. that's what I'm trying to change as Prime Minister and you know that will define my time in office. Do you think you'd still study English literature today? What are you trying to say? But just if you were in your early 20s in 2026 what do you think you'd be looking to start your career doing? I would actually I've thought a lot about this because again back to my dad he tried to talk me out of it you know he said what are you going to do with an English degree um but I always pointed him to a poem by Tony Harrison the Yorkshire poet because he he begins it with a quote from Arthur Scargill of all people the quote says this my father reads the dictionary every day he says your life depends upon your power to master words and I lent on that as a young man to justify my degree choice but i always come back to it because i think an ability to kind of use words use the power of words i think it's something that is beneficial in any walk of life it's as beneficial in business life as it is in politics if you're selling something i think you need to kind of know how best to put that thing forward i you know i often talk about it being the meta skill language the ability to like communication, particularly with AI and like being able to tell the AI what you need and so on will be crucial.

11:32And this is what I'm saying about education today. You know, I make a very big critique of the Gov era because sport was dismantled in schools and the creative subjects were sort of pushed right out of the curriculum, the English baccalaureate. Now, that's wrong as far as I'm concerned, because the creative subjects, sport, brings employability skills. You know, the things that you learn by doing those things are huge. But also for the young people who are talented in those areas, the day they know they're going to be on the pitch or the day they know they're going to be up on a stage is the day they feel, right, I will have my moment to shine today and that will give me the confidence in school.

12:20To deny young people that I think is quite criminal actually. That is huge as far as I'm concerned. Creativity in young people and enabling them to feel confident and the confidence that comes with excelling in sport and the arts is massive. And yeah, expect that to be a feature of my time. I'm massive on school sport. They'll have to stop me from making it compulsory in this building because i i would always uh go down that nervous faces the number 10 five-side team exactly exactly um speaking of walking in others shoes uh your children are all in their kind of early 20s like how are you seeing the kind of job market through them and their friends eyes because we do have this one million under 24s not in education employment or training yeah like how are you viewing it through them what are they they telling you yeah so i i've got quite a bit of experience in this regard.

13:18So, you know, I do have a sort of a, my head in the world of some of our 20 somethings. And I think it's, it's quite harsh, I would say, and quite unfair at times. One thing I really don't like is this culture now of interviewing via Zoom or Teams. That just doesn't seem right to me. I know it's convenient for the organisations that do it, But how does a young person shine in that situation? How do you get over some of your personality, your passion? It seems to me to then work against people who have that side to their character and work for those who are just giving the more formulaic answer.

13:57So I do worry about that. And I've seen that in relation to my kids and their situation. It just does feel harder, doesn't it, these days to make that breakthrough, to get that first connection and how do young people get that first bit of experience seems to be quite random. How do we make it easier for employers because a pushback you would get and I can feel it coming on LinkedIn when I talk about this bit is them say oh well it's harder now there's more kind of health and safety regulations it's more challenging it used to be much easier 20 years ago to sort of get somebody to work shadow what would you say to that?

14:36I don't know if that's true i i would always be open to looking again at any regulations that made that harder but i have had a big drive in my previous role as mayor of greater manchester around 45-day work placements now they were an innovation of the last conservative government but they were one i was very happy to support indeed proud to support because i think they found a solution to the work experience issue that this country's never found before. And I got my team to get on the phone and ring all the big players in Greater Manchester to say, right, we need more of these placements for young people.

15:15And last year, we got 1 ,000 extra placements just by persuasion. And I think sometimes the barriers are imagined rather than real. In some professions, law, financial services, there maybe is a challenge in having a 16 to 18-year-old within the environment. But I think there are always solutions. I understand the nervousness, but I am, as Prime Minister, going to be asking the business world just to lean in that bit more to the Youth Unemployment Challenge. I will be changing public procurement, more social valuating in public contracts, and it will particularly be focusing on more provision of those 45-day work placements, more work experience for young people, more apprenticeships.

16:00I think we need to really focus on the thing that we most need. But in the end, there's a sweet spot there between government and business, because in the end, skills is a massive challenge for them. And finding the right young people that are suited to their organisations is crucial to them, too. Your children are aged between 21 and 26, I think. I'm curious as to whether you're seeing a difference in the challenges that they're facing in the workplace, because it strikes me that the culture of the workforce is actually evolving incredibly quickly yeah i think so i certainly think it's changed post pandemic um not necessarily for the better as i was saying before in terms of online recruitment ai as well in terms of cvs and a sifting of employment applications.

16:53I don't know. It doesn't feel to me that recruitment in the sort of post-pandemic era is becoming fairer. And I just think it's worth me saying that and people just pausing on that. Recruitment's got to be about individuality, people bringing out the kind of unique things that they've got to offer. and my worry is that some of the recruitment practices now don't allow that as much and I'm not just talking about my own kids obviously I hear from a wider circle of friends it just feels it's a little more difficult and if you've got those proof points on your CV that are more easy to land if you let's say you're from a more connected world perhaps you're then much better off rather than someone just coming in with a bit of raw talent and showing that in a in-person interview.

17:48I do feel something is being missed here. I think as well with AI, those social capital and social networks become more important. How else do you think AI will sort of change our economy more broadly? Do you think we'll have AGI by 2029, the time of the next election potentially? Well, we have to take that issue really seriously. I came in as mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017. And at the time, all I was hearing was coding, coding. We need more coding courses. And we put a lot of effort into that. And now I'm told almost a decade on that that's almost been made redundant by AI or not completely, but in large part.

18:30So that is something of a sort of salutary lesson, I think, there. it's going to change the workplace for sure and it's why at the request of the trade unions and business voices I've created a ministerial post focused on the future of work because it's gonna if that level of change can happen in a decade it's probably going to accelerate and some of these changes could come at us more quickly than we realize. That point that the Prime Minister makes about the rapidly changing labour market is exactly why LinkedIn data is so important. Back when I worked at 10 Downing Street over a decade ago I used to love getting the information right from the employers about what was happening in the jobs market.

19:16Getting their take on where they thought our economy was going in real time was crucial. LinkedIn is working with the government in lots of different ways. They're help building workforces that really matter. They're helping government understand the data about where jobs are changing and they're working with the jobs and careers service to explain this. Frankly we're all struggling a little bit with understanding AI's impact on the economy and how it's going to change jobs. It's literally the whole point of the podcast. LinkedIn can see where jobs are growing, where skills are changing and how people are transitioning their role.

19:50They're using that data to help people find their next opportunity and also help employers hire based on skills and capability rather than just pedigree. And helping governments build workforces that actually work. That's where LinkedIn Data is supporting the new government's jobs and careers scheme. And they're also doing a lot of work around AI and seeing how that is changing the economy and changing jobs of the future, which is frankly something we're all slightly grappling with. If you did do a technical apprenticeship, what do you think you would do it in today? Well, it's a good question because there is an argument that technical skills are more future proof for the reason I was just giving.

20:38What would I do it in? I, from my own sort of background, I probably would be linked to communication in terms of what I did coming through university but you know I absolutely would say to young people all the technical skills are I think a really good and safe bet. We've said today you know we've got to learn as a society to value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap and you know it's more than a soundbite it's a really important point we don't do that and we haven't done that as a country and maybe we're really hitting a point now where the messages we're giving to young people are really not where they should be so yeah I would recommend a system where young people have just got a clear choice academic and technical together and the ability to weave between between the two I think we need to become more flexible more fluid much more focused on the workplace of now.

21:44In fact, we need to show young people the jobs in the modern workplace and let them build back from that in making their choices at 14, 16, 18. That's the big education reform that I've announced today. And that's why we should tune into Jimmy's Jobs of the Future as well, where we do it. Now, I know you're a fan of nostalgia. I have a recent bit of nostalgia here. do you remember this this is a sky news top trump cars your your your um listeners viewers are too young to know what top trumps are surely quite trump is associated with a different thing yeah now i'll test you on what sky news rated you at the time so there's three things here what was your majority in 2010 what was your potential and what was your fancibility rating now you're asking um majority in 2010 would have been 17 000 15 000 okay not bad near enough the second one potential uh out of 10 out of 10 um um i don't know seven six five um sky news i mean they're gonna have to they're pundits that hopefully are better these days than they were then and the fancibility one oh i don't know you can't you can't answer that too well they gave you 88 out of 100 out of 100 well pretty impressive but there is a serious point with that the potential was at five right you're now sitting here as prime minister go back to that question again of young people trying to find their way in the world what is your advice to somebody like that who thinks that they're maybe not quite getting it right i you know if i kind of look back to myself in that era um clearly people hadn't seen what i was fully about because i only really found my voice i would say through some of what I lived through at the end of the Labour government, particularly the work I did on Hillsborough.

23:53And then as I came through that, I really knew what I was about and I'd started to kind of find my confidence. So I understand why they maybe put that. But I think it's true of young people from working class backgrounds. It can take a longer time to feel you belong and to feel you've got the confidence to speak out in a room where other people appear that they're perhaps more confident communicator than you are. And, you know, that I think is a very common experience of young people from parts of the country where, you know, perhaps they don't see as much privilege as they do in others. But the thing I would say to them is, you know, you mustn't let that kind of really sort of do you down.

24:42I mean, it can do people down. I was at Cambridge, as I said, and, you know, I was in this room with people who just would, you know, they've been taught to hold forth and come out with big opinions. And I was there, what, two years before I thought, oh, my goodness, right, they are talking absolute rubbish, but they sound so good when they're saying it. But finally, when I realised that, I kind of thought, well, I think I can, you know, come back at this. What's the one thing young people could do to accelerate finding their voice? Because I think it's a really good point, but it's hard. I come back to the work shadowing thing.

25:19I honestly think it's crucial and it's why I do it. And I again would say, please offer it if you're in a position to offer it. It can make all the difference. Just getting people into the position where they don't have that, often quite lack, crippling lack of self-belief. That is what I would say to anybody starting out. Just get, you know, people who follow Jimmy's jobs, you know, maybe things aren't quite where you want them to be right now. Just find a way of getting yourself into another room, seeing another world, speaking to somebody who may be from your background but is doing well. Just get those perspectives.

26:01Build your network, build your capital, just understand things and don't be so hard on yourself. I think, you know, if I look back, I was way too hard on myself. You know, just know what you're good at, feel proud of what you're good at and then build from there. Now, I would like what we've asked people to do before is write a message to the kind of next generation in their book. The challenge with your book is it's sold out. I should have spoken to your publishers about getting another run of the new job. Do you think you could write a quick note in here for people that we can use? Yeah, yeah, perfect.

26:39What would I say?

26:44Well, war and peace here. Politician, English lit, guys. Exactly. You've asked the wrong person. He's going to be going on to the same day. You've asked the wrong person. Brilliant. So we asked Andy Burnham to write a message to the younger generation about their careers and he said believe in yourself you're good enough and probably much better than you think. I also think what he said at the end about getting into new rooms, going to events, building that social capital is a really really good point as well. Maybe we'll talk to him again about it in the future. The Prime Minister's advice on building your network and getting into new rooms was so important I thought.

27:22When it comes to social capital actually one of the things about the modern economy is that you can build social capital online. It's where I think LinkedIn is actually a really valuable tool for anyone in their careers but perhaps even more so for people early on. There is nowhere better to build your career capital than online at LinkedIn. You can follow all the people that inspire you from business and enterprise. You can engage with them right on their channel in terms of commenting on it and you can also see the people that work for them as well who might actually be more impactful and influential on your starting career anyway.

27:58When I was chatting to the team at LinkedIn about this episode they gave me this amazing statistic which is if you're connected to somebody at a company you are four times more likely to end up working there. I thought that was staggering and just shows that example of how you can build career capital so i think it's a really valuable tool for people to use also it's just one of the places where the conversation happens we're going to be posting lots of these clips from the annie burnham episode on linkedin you will have thoughts on what he said about zoom style recruitment and what he was also talking about in terms of work shadowing and so on we're going to be having a debate on there with my 20 000 followers about what he thinks if you're keen to get involved then make sure you get on LinkedIn, follow me at Jimmy McLaughlin OBE or our company page at Jimmy's Jobs of the Future and we look forward to carrying on the conversation there.