![\"Job](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/job-centre.png\")
<\/p>\nA UK charity has today released its latest report on the barriers that are preventing people from working.<\/p>\n
It comes as Britain’s unemployment rate has increased again – to the highest level in nearly five years, with one in six young people currently out of work. <\/p>\n
The UK jobless rate for 16 to 24 year olds is the highest in over a decade. <\/p>\n
Businesses are closing and 1.8 million Britons are currently out of work.<\/p>\n
More out-of-work people are now actively looking for a job, while the number of unemployed people per job vacancy is at a new post-pandemic high.<\/p>\n
Christians Against Poverty, which runs face-to-face job clubs in communities across the UK, has identified the challenges people face with confidence, self-esteem, and a lack of skills, which can be further exacerbated by the experience of unemployment itself.<\/p>\n
Amy Tyson now works at Christians Against Poverty as a Service Support Co-Ordinator after gaining support from the one of the charity’s Job Clubs.<\/p>\n
But before that she struggled to survive without a wage after losing her job and having to live off \u00a3500 in benefits per month.<\/p>\n
The number of unemployed people per job vacancy is at a new post-pandemic high<\/p>\n
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GB NEWS<\/p>\n
She told GB News: “I went without food quite often and there were also times when I would kind of have to go without gas – electric was okay, but I had to go without gas, so it was just really cold all the time.<\/p>\n
“Then on top of like trying to just survive, you’re still, expected to find work and just finding work was just so hard.<\/p>\n
“I felt like I didn’t really want to [be here], I didn’t see the point in being alive or anything and didn’t have a lot of support in place either, so just it was a really hard time.”<\/p>\n
The barriers preventing people from finding work identified by Christians Against Poverty included a lack of confidence and self-esteem have made it difficult for a quarter of adults not currently in work to enter employment in the past two years.<\/p>\n
![\"Barriers](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/barriers-to-work.png\")
The barriers preventing people from finding work identified by Christians Against Poverty included a lack of confidence and self-esteem<\/p>\n
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GB NEWS<\/p>\n
Around nine million UK adults report having been unsuccessful in 10 or more job applications in the past 12 months.<\/p>\n
Additionally, 14 per cent of those surveyed think that they do not have enough experience to be successful at getting a role and 10 per cent think that they do not currently have the necessary skills they need for work.<\/p>\n
Stewart McCulloch, Chief Executive Officer of Christians Against Poverty, told GB News: “If you look at the sheer number of people in worthlessness and low paid, insecure jobs, that’s economically unaffordable.<\/p>\n
“It’s changing our economics, it’s changing our society, it’s changing our politics, and I think that’s a real crisis that we’ve got to solve.<\/p>\n
“What we find in Christians Against Poverty is that we’ve got two layers that are now structural in terms of there’s people who are stuck in worklessness, and there are people who are stuck in low paid, insecure work and therefore that’s not paying the bills, and so they’re still on benefits.<\/p>\n
“What we’d really love to see is the government helping those, those layers to get back into work. But the way I put it is helping people to help themselves.<\/p>\n
“The more we can help them do that, the more we can address this fundamental problem with our country of too many people out of work.”<\/p>\n
With declining job vacancies, a growing welfare bill, and record numbers of young people out of work or education, Christians Against Poverty is calling on the government and employers to do more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A UK charity has today released its latest report on the barriers that are preventing people from working.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-301843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}