{"id":656325,"date":"2026-06-24T20:50:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/656325\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T20:50:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T20:50:26","slug":"16m-stormont-scheme-to-get-economically-inactive-into-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/656325\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00a316m Stormont scheme to get economically inactive into work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stormont has committed \u00a316m to tackle persistently high levels of economic inactivity in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

The most recent data suggests that almost 27% of people aged 16-64 in Northern Ireland are inactive, compared to a UK average of 21%.<\/p>\n

That equates to about 317,000 people, although about 75,000 of those are in education.<\/p>\n

Former UK health minister Alan Milburn has been appointed as chairman of the newly established Commission on Work and Wellbeing to help reduce that number.<\/p>\n

Economic inactivity refers to people who are not in work and not looking for work, including people who are sick, disabled or have caring responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Milburn recently completed an interim report on joblessness among young people in Great Britain.<\/a><\/p>\n

Led by the Department for Communities, the NI scheme will have a wider remit to help adults who have dropped out of the jobs market.<\/p>\n

It will include pilot schemes in Londonderry and Belfast, funded by money from Stormont’s public services transformation fund.<\/p>\n

Communities Minister Gordon Lyons said economic inactivity is one of the most pressing challenges for Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

“We have a huge number of people not in the workplace,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s not good for society as a whole in Northern Ireland but it is also not good those individuals, it’s not compassionate, it’s limiting opportunity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stormont has committed \u00a316m to tackle persistently high levels of economic inactivity in Northern Ireland. The most recent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-656325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}