For our second video on youth unemployment in the UK, we visited a charity called City Gateway, on the day it was celebrating the opening of its new centre in Canary Wharf.  Before the royal dignitaries arrived, we spoke to CEO Eddie Stride about the work that City Gateway is doing to help young people from the local area — Tower Hamlets in east London —into apprenticeships and ultimately employment.

We also spoke to a number of young people who have benefited from the charity.  One in particular captured our attention. Marcus – featured in this video –had spent a year applying for an apprenticeship but kept being rejected because he had no experience.  This made no sense to him, since apprenticeships are surely meant to be about gaining experience.  City Gateway is trying to break this cycle by bridging the gap between the unemployed and apprenticeships.

Since Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, there has been a significant increase in the number of apprenticeships being taken up in this country. But clearly barriers continue to exist for some young people, which subsequently prevent them from entering the workforce.  The UK had 885,000 unemployed young people at the end of 2013—the second highest in the EU (behind Spain).

Lehman's old European headquarters (now home to J.P. Morgan) is a two-minute walk from City Gateway. Yet, as Mr Stride pointed out, the financial crisis did not cause high youth unemployment. In Tower Hamlets it has been a big problem ever since the charity was set up in 1999. 

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