What Do People Who Help Long-term JSA Claimants into Employment Say About Their Clients’ Attitudes to Work and Job Search Behaviour?

Characteristics of the respondents: All worked in England, Scotland or Wales for organisations contracted by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to promote the labour market participation of out-of-work benefit claimants; in all cases this included people on JSA. Most (25) had ‘employment adviser’ roles (mainly helping clients with job search and developing their employability), 11 organised work placements for clients, and 4 were office managers. The sample of respondents was balanced, albeit loosely, for age, gender and ethnicity, region, size of towns/cities and their levels of prosperity, and type of organisation (charity or business).

Characteristics of clients: The vast majority of all respondents’ clients had claimed JSA for at least six months and almost all came into contact with the activation workers not voluntarily, but as a condition of continuing to receive JSA. Thus, importantly, they were a different group of ‘unemployed people’ from those in the in-depth interviews in Chapter 4 (these could be any JSA claimant) and in the survey work in Chapter 5 (these all gave their ‘main economic activity’ as ‘unemployed and seeking work’).