The Jobs Foundation

🚀 We're hiring! The Jobs Foundation is looking for a Business Council Manager to help shape how thousands of employers engage with policy at the highest levels: Westminster, the devolved nations, and mayoral combined authorities across the UK. You spend your time building local business networks with regional chairs and steering committees, driving the rollout of the Jobs Foundation Pledge, and turning employer voices into real influence where decisions get made. You'll develop genuine expertise across network management, stakeholder engagement, events, membership, and policy, with the freedom to grow what we've built and take it further. This could be for you if: ✅ You're a natural connector who holds your own with senior stakeholders ✅ You come from a policy, public affairs, or political background and want a role with real breadth and visibility ✅ You believe business has a vital role to play in creating jobs and opportunity across the UK ✅ You thrive in fast-moving environments and know how to make things happen 📍 London | Full Time | Permanent 📅 Closing 5th June 2026 (interviews may begin before this date) Send a CV and cover letter to jamie@thejobsfoundation.com, or read more below ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/eySdYEDP

We had a brilliant time in Yorkshire this month, visiting two leading members of Jobs Foundation Yorkshire. 🌿 At AESSEAL in Rotherham, we saw what employer-led opportunity really looks like. 300+ apprenticeships, 25+ career pathways, and a guaranteed permanent role for every single apprentice. 👏 CEO Chris Rea has made inspiring people into work central to how the business is led. Then on to Naylor Industries in Barnsley, where Edward Naylor runs a 400-person, family-owned manufacturer where some staff are now into their families second and third generation at the firm. 🏭 A business that genuinely knows its people, invests in their futures and creates opportunity across the region. Business, at its best, is the most powerful engine of opportunity we have. Jobs Foundation Yorkshire is proving it. 💪 You can read more here👇 https://lnkd.in/e_xcRMTY Martin McKervey Ashfaq Gulab. JP. MCMI Kam Grewal Joy Deborah Bullivant MBE DL EdD Ken Ross OBE Dr Spencer Pitfield OBE

Work and Pensions Secretary, Pat McFadden visited our Advisory Council member Christopher Nieper OBE DL's David Nieper Academy in Alfreton last week. The school that has effectively eliminated NEETs among its leavers. Post-18, the figure is zero, and post-16, it's under 1%. Nationally, nearly one million 16-to-24-year-olds are currently classified as NEET. 📊 We visited the Academy as part of our Ladders of Opportunity research, and it's one of the most compelling examples we found of a school treating employability as seriously as academic outcomes. Students go through career interviews, enterprise projects and public speaking, structured experiences designed to build the confidence and practical skills employers actually look for. McFadden put his finger on something important during the visit. Drawing on conversations with pupils and teachers staff, he saw first hand the value of instilling employability and confidence amongst pupils from an early age, and the impact that this has on career outcomes. 💡 The Academy is part of the Christopher Nieper Education Trust, connected to the David Nieper clothing company, a business that still designs and manufactures everything in Alfreton. Christopher Nieper told us his approach is straightforward: hire for attitude, invest in local people, and build an organisation your community wants to be part of. The Academy reflects the same thinking applied to education. There are nearly 1,000,000 young NEETs in this country. David Nieper Academy holds many of the answers to getting our young people into employment, and we're excited that this has been recognised at the highest levels of Government too. 👏 You can read the full Ladders of Opportunity report, including the David Nieper case study here: https://lnkd.in/eJTMeFhF.

We're thrilled to have Sir Sajid Javid write the foreword to our latest report 'Jobs and Investment' written by Andrew Allum and Duncan Simpson 🙌 His foreword opens with a story from his teenage years. Buying British Gas shares during the privatisations, then Rolls Royce, BAA, British Steel. For a brief moment, ordinary people became investors, owning a stake in our economy and helping support businesses to grow. But today, Britain isn't investing. British households sit on nearly £2 trillion in savings outside property and pensions, much of it in cash going nowhere, while the UK runs a £100bn annual investment gap against its peers. Get that capital flowing into growing businesses, and you get more investment, more productivity, and more jobs 📈 Jobs and Investment sets out how to make that happen 👇 https://lnkd.in/e6RXdQ5a

🚀 The Jobs Foundation is hiring a Business Council Manager as we expand our network across the UK! 🚀 This role sits at the intersection of business and politics, helping to translate the voice of thousands of employers into real policy influence at Westminster, in the devolved nations, and across mayoral combined authorities. Working with regional chairs and steering committees, you'll build engaged local networks, drive the rollout of the Jobs Foundation Pledge, and help turn our mission into meaningful impact in communities across the UK. You'll have real ownership over how we grow and deepen our business community, developing expertise across network management, stakeholder engagement, events, membership, and policy work. This is for you if: ✅ You're a natural connector who thrives with senior stakeholders. ✅ You have a policy, public affairs, or political background and want an outward-facing role with real breadth. ✅ You care about the role business plays in creating jobs and opportunity across the UK. ✅ You're sharp, organised, and energised by a fast-moving environment. 📍 London | Full Time | Permanent 📅 Closing 5th June 2026 (interviews may begin before this date) To apply, send a CV and cover letter to jamie@thejobsfoundation.com or read more below ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/eySdYEDP

Our response to today's King's Speech, setting out the Government's legislative priorities for the coming year: ❌ No Welfare Reform Bill - a massive missed opportunity. Nine million people are economically inactive, the defining challenge of our time. Until we act to build a welfare system that truly supports people into work, millions will remain locked out of employment and denied the purpose, identity, and dignity that a good job provides. ⚡ The Energy Independence Bill is welcome, but scaling up clean British energy must not come at the cost of the workers and industries caught in the midst of this transition. In particular, the reaffirming of the Government's commitment to no new oil licences is a worry for the sector. Our Cliff Edge report sets out exactly what's at stake for those communities if Government gets this wrong. 🏦 The Enhancing Financial Services Bill must include measures to boost investment. Our latest Jobs and Investment report shows that 13.5 million ordinary households are sitting on over £800 billion in savings eroded by inflation, locked out of productive investment by regulatory barriers designed to protect them. Reforming financial services means freeing those savers to invest in British businesses, and in doing so, closing the £100 billion annual investment gap to boost productivity and create more jobs. ➡️ More broadly, Bills on regulation and competition to remove unnecessary barriers on businesses are welcome. But much more will have to be done if we're to give UK businesses a policy environment that truly allows them to thrive. 🎙️ We'll be making sure that the voice of job creation and entrepreneurship is heard as these Bills proceed through Parliament.

We spent three days in Northern Ireland last month, meeting some of the nation's leading business leaders and employers 🤝 Wrightbus in Ballymena has 1,300 employees, with buses rolling off the line since 1946, and is now a global leader on electric and hydrogen buses⚡ Lynas Foodservice provides food to brands like KFC and Caffè Nero across Ireland and Scotland. ☕️ Galgorm Collection built a hospitality college because they couldn't find the skilled workers they needed and decided to train them themselves 🎓 Everywhere we went, businesses in Northern Ireland want to invest in their people. We're excited to be launching Jobs Foundation Northern Ireland launches later this year 🌱 You can read more about our trip here: https://lnkd.in/ev_cY2A5

🚨 Doubling living standards used to take 28 years. Now it would take nearly 80. 📉 That's the UK's productivity crisis, and our new research shows that it's been building since the mid-90s, not since 2008. 🏦 The solution is the cash sitting in British bank accounts right now: £2.3 trillion in household cash, quietly eroded by inflation, doing nothing for the economy. ✅ Our latest report, Jobs and Investment, makes the case for unlocking it. 83% of savers say they'd invest more with the right reforms in place. The diagnosis isn't in dispute. What's missing is the political will to act. 👉 Read more in today's Daily Mail: https://lnkd.in/e5-eQ6JX 👉 Read about our launch event: https://lnkd.in/e5YHkiFu 👉 Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/e5YHkiFu Andrew Allum Duncan Simpson

Yesterday, we held the launch for our latest report, 'Jobs and Investment: Using untapped capital to boost productivity and growth'. ⭐️ We had a star-studded panel of Alys Denby, Andrew Allum, Lord Richard Harrington and Simon French to discuss the conclusions of the report and how we can channel more retail capital into productive investment - generating better returns for savers, boosting economic growth, and creating more jobs. Watch the event below ⬇️

This morning in Westminster, we held the launch panel for our latest report, 'Jobs and Investment: Using untapped capital to boost productivity and growth' - written by Andrew Allum and Duncan Simpson. We had a fantastic panel of experts from across business, policy and the media who were all eloquent about how we can channel the savings of mainstream investors into productive investment - boosting the economy and creating more jobs across the UK. Some highlights include: 🏡 Simon French argued that both households and institutions are parking capital in the wrong places, pushing for conditional tax relief and a stronger home-bias to redirect funds where the UK economy actually needs them. 📈 Alys Denby connected the productivity gap directly to falling living standards and rising political anger, noting that cultural obsessions with property and "safe" careers suppress investment appetite, though younger, fintech-savvy investors may be turning the tide. 💼 Lord Richard Harrington warned that the UK is squandering its natural advantages through planning gridlock, bureaucratic silos and policy flip-flopping, and called for a single, powerful government "concierge" to cut through the red tape deterring investors. 📚 And Andrew pinpointed chronic underinvestment as the root of Britain's productivity woes, prescribing better financial education, wider access to high-risk assets, and smarter tax incentives to unlock savers' money. To read the full report, click here: https://lnkd.in/dg7vzXjk.