Targeting Jobs to Local People: the British Urban Policy Experience

Abstract

The paper compares the effectiveness of a number of employment-generating schemes in terms of the proportion of jobs created going to locally resident unemployed workers. Whilst the paper establishes that considerable leakages do occur, a wide range of experience is identified which may in part be due to the differing methodologies used by the policy analysts concerned. This is due to the often inadequate attention paid to the study of local labour market institutions and dynamics. Some categories of workers continue to be systematically discriminated against, and policies which are currently being developed may help some of these workers overcome obstacles but without identifying and dismantling labour market barriers.

Race, Urban Policy and Urban Problems: A Critique on Current UK Practice

“…The overwhelming impression, for data are limited, is that the benefits accruing to black communities have been incidental rather than intrinsic within urban policy and have been confined to individual projects . As Haughton (1990) argued recently, in terms of targeting jobs to local people for example, little has been done to tackle discriminatory obstacles within labour markets.…”

“…To some extent academic analysis has followed the trends in the development of urban policy, seeking out typologies of exemplary employment schemes, some of which benefit `ethnic minorities' (DOE, 1990b, c;Haughton, 1990). However, with few exceptions there has been an assump-RACE, URBAN POLICY AND PROBLEMS 185 tion that policies and programmes will automatically be sensitive to race .…”

Community Business and Urban Regeneration

“…Furthermore, where new jobs have been generated in these areas, their impact on local unemployment rates has been diluted by a dispersed hiring pattern and a reluctance by employers to hire from the ranks of the local long-term unemployed (McArthur, 1.987) . It is estimated that as few as 17 per cent of jobs generated in the inner cities have been secured by local residents (Haughton, 1990) .…”

Crafting Evaluation Research in the Public Sector: Reconciling Rigour and Relevance

“…Firstly, it leads to a neglect of qualitative improvements, for example wider demographic and social changes within an area . Thus, many evaluations which have measured the numbers of jobs created by economic interventions have given little or no consideration to key equity issues such as the quality of new jobs or who has access to them (Haughton, 1990).…”