Inventing our future Collective action for a sustainable economy

Where do we want to be?
Headline regional ambitions
36
Employment
If the employment rate of 16–74 year olds in the region reached 70 per cent
by 2031, there would be over 424,000 more residents with jobs than today.
In both a UK and global context, employment rates are high in the East of
England. Currently, around 77 per cent of the working-age population are
in employment (April 2006 to March 2007). Yet this partly reflects the low
provision of higher education places: there is a net outflow of students
who leave the region to study elsewhere and as a result, a large share of
young people are in work rather than in full-time education or training.
The post-retirement age workforce is an increasingly important source of
GVA per capita indices under the RES-RSS and business-as-usual scenarios
employment
GVA indicies (2007
growth.
=
The
100
employment rate of 16–74 year-olds was
around 67 per cent over 2006/07.
180
The picture is varied around the region, with the working-age employment
170
rate at around 85 per cent in Harlow and South Norfolk, and less than
70 160per
cent in Luton and Cambridge. In Cambridge this reflects the share
of 150the
population who are students and who are RES-RSS not in paid employment
during term time; in Luton, economic activity rates are low among
140
females in certain ethnic minority communities.
130
Business-as-usual
Employment 120 performance is also dependent on economic growth and
structural factors such as skill levels. In setting regional ambitions around
110
employment, the RES-RSS joint modelling project was used to investigate
the 100 levels and rates consistent with the region’s ambition on GVA. Based
on this research, the RES sets the ambition of a 70 per cent employment
rate of the 16–74 population and, on past trends, this is consistent with a
minimum 80 per cent employment rate for the working-age population
(on the current definition of 16–59/64). This is a challenging ambition
that, if achieved, would see 424,000 more residents with jobs than today.
Careful monitoring will be required to understand the evolution of
employment over the RES period and, in particular, that improved
performance is underpinned by increasing skill levels and not by falling
participation in education and training.
2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031
Figure 8
Percentage of 16–74 year olds in employment under the RES-RSS and
Employment business-as-usual rate scenarios (working age + post-retirement
72
71
70
69
68
67
66
Business-as-usual
65
2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 2025 2027 2029 2031
Source: East of England Forecasting Model (RES-RSS joint modelling project)
RES-RSS