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 mood swings without reflecting the extent to which the bulk of sentiments remain unchanged.

Common assumptions

 Surveys of workers, rather than employers, also reveal findings that challenge common assumptions. The Quarterly Labour Force Survey asks individual workers whether they have had any job-related education or training in the previous four weeks. From the mid-1990s the proportion in employment saying ‘yes’ rose steadily, peaking in 2001- 02 at around 15 per cent (Figure 2 below). Thereafter, it fell slowly, to about 13 per cent at the start of the recession. Surprisingly, the recession is invisible in these data; decline started well before the downturn and was not noticeably increased by it.

However, there is little doubt that young adults (aged 16 to 24) experienced the worst of the recession. Their employment rate dropped from 58.5 per cent in the third quarter of 2008 to 50 per cent in the first quarter of 2010. From the second quarter of 2009 apprenticeship participation fell among all young people and even fell as a proportion of those in work. Overall, the estimated number of young people doing an apprenticeship fell from 191,000 in quarter one of 2009 to 140,000 a year later.

In order to drill down to the workplace level, we interviewed employers across different sectors of the economy. Those untouched by the recession had either maintained training regimes or expanded them. Those most severely affected had cut training to the bone and pushed it into the background. Between these extremes, some four-fifths of our respondents had modified their training regimes, without entirely abandoning them, in order to maintain coverage. This was achieved by reshaping the organisation and delivery of training programmes.

The employers we interviewed had encountered a wide range of ‘training floors’, that is, essential training indispensible for the business. These included needs generated by legal regulations, operational processes, skills shortages, market competition, managerial imperatives and customer pressure. These are exemplified by the comments in Box 1.

Box 1: Training Floors

‘A lot of training we do for the men at the coal face, so to speak, is pretty well non-negotiable. It’s written down. You have to do it. Have to do it for legislative reasons.’ Petroleum services company

‘Literally, the only way the business can continue to move forward is through the staff ’s knowledge. So it’s the one area we wouldn’t cut back on. We would never put that at risk at all.’ Supermarket store

‘I think it’s something you’ve still got to do no matter what. And if you maybe cut back too much on that it has the opposite effect. It’s really important.’ Commercial premises fitters

All persons aged 16 to 65. ‘Training’ is indicated by ‘any education or any training connected with your job, or a job that you might be able to do in the future’; the period covered is the previous four weeks.


Faced with financial restraints, our respondents aimed to deliver high-quality training in more cost-effective ways, expressed in phrases such as ‘doing more for less’ and

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