On Monday we celebrated achieving 1,000 single parents into work in Doncaster. Local MP Rosie Winterton came along to celebrate this achievement and congratulate all those involved. Rosie, Minister for Transport and Minister for Yorkshire and the Humber remembered opening the single parent office four years ago. Since then the team have worked with almost 2000 single parents and have now found over 1,000 of them work. Kaye Rideout, Senior Operations Manager for Yorkshire, thanked Rosie for coming, thanked partners, particularly Jobcentre Plus for their support and thanked the Reed team for their achievements. 

Yesterday saw the publication of the latest employment trends, which were something of a mixed bag. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.2%, total employment climbed by 117,000 to reach 29.5 million, but unemployment rose by 14,000 to 1.61 million. Commentators are now in broad agreement that the economy is slowing, but my view is this should not prevent us continuing to help thousands of jobseekers. There are still plenty of vacancies available, indeed today on Reed.co.uk alone there are over 227,000. Our job is make sure we are preparing people for these vacancies and it may be that we have to do this even more effectively over the coming months.

There is still a huge unused talent amongst those out of work and our job is to unlock it. What do you think?

Chris Melvin, Managing Director, Reed in Partnership. 15 May 2008