Education and training → Employment: chain of analysis

ChainWhat it assumes · how to break it

Start

The government increases spending on education and training, for example funding apprenticeships and adult skills courses.

As a result, unemployed and low-skilled workers gain the skills that growing industries need.
retraining

Assumes: Courses match the vacancies that exist.

But: If the jobs are in another region, workers may be unable to move because of housing costs or family ties (geographical immobility).

This means workers can move from declining industries into expanding ones, so occupational immobility falls.
occupational immobility

Assumes: Workers take up the training.

But: Older workers in particular may be reluctant to retrain for a new career.

Consequently, vacancies are filled more quickly and the mismatch between workers' skills and employers' needs shrinks.
skills mismatch

Assumes: Employers hire the newly trained.

But: Employers may still prefer experienced workers over newly trained ones.

Therefore, structural unemployment falls, and the natural rate of unemployment falls with it.
structural unemployment · natural rate

Best link to attack
Assumes: The unemployment is structural.

But: If unemployment is cyclical, caused by weak demand, training does not create jobs and the trained stay unemployed.

End

Unemployment falls.

Time lag: retraining takes months or years, so this works slowly compared with demand-side policy.

Can you say this chain from memory?
Members can hide the links, test themselves and track which chains they have mastered.

Explain how training schemes might reduce structural unemployment.
Assess the policies a government could use to reduce unemployment.
Discuss whether supply-side policies are more effective than demand-side policies in reducing unemployment.

Long-run Phillips curve shifts left as the natural rate falls; or LRAS shifts right.

Cuts to training → mismatch persists → structural unemployment stays high.

GCSE version