Moving the dial on economic inactivity to build inclusive futures across Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland (NI) has a long history of lagging behind other regions in the UK across a range of social and economic performance indicators. NI's challenges are multifaceted, deeply routed in culture and legacy issues associated with the Troubles and compounded by a lack of a functioning government, Brexit challenges, funding cuts and a growing need for public services. The OECD's (2019) review of the NI Skills system identified dispersed governance arrangements with low levels of employer engagement as a central challenge in driving improved performance. They identify, among other things, the need to involve more stakeholders within the policy cycle, improving data and information sharing and enhancing monitoring and evaluation processes. Skills deficits and labour shortages are dominant factors contributing to NI's lagging performance and eroding local businesses' ability to compete on a global stage.

Economic inactivity represents a systemic and historically Wicked Issue for NI. It is around 6 percentage points above the UK average, and has deep routed issues linked to poverty, health / wellbeing, and social inclusion. Low unemployment rates, combined with a slowdown in growth of the 16-64 age range, has resulted in 'hidden unemployed' groups (women, individuals with disabilities, over 50's and individuals in disadvantaged places) being key to NI's short- and medium-term skills and labour challenges. However, NI faces challenges in 'reactivating' such groups. For example, NI has the lowest disability employment rate across the UK. To achieve the UK governments Levelling Up Agenda, the Department for Economy: 10X Economic Vision for NI and the Department for Communities strategy 'Building Inclusive Communities 2020-2025', evidence-based interventions and policy making are needed to reduce economic inactivity in NI, and in particular to reactivate 'hidden unemployed' groups into the labour market. Through stakeholder consultations and co-design sessions, it has been identified that an LPIP hub in NI would have a true transformational capability to bring together cross-sectoral and cross departmental strategic stakeholders. This project will develop a NI LPIP hub that will be a pioneering 'think tank' bringing together diverse stakeholders in an open forum, and providing an evidence base for policy and programmes aimed at targeting the 'hidden unemployed' within the economic inactive population. To achieve this, at a holistic level, the hub will deliver on a programme of activities which have the following aims: 1) to fill research gaps and develop our understanding in relation to skills and employability in NI holistically and at sub-regional levels, 2) to analyse trends and behaviours of the current and future labour market in NI, 3) to co-creationally identify interventions and develop policy recommendations which aid NI's skills and employability challenges, which are evidence-based and 4) to facilitate partnership building across government departments, councils, community representatives, industry representatives, education providers focused on skills and employability agendas to collectively work towards shared goals of helping alleviate economic inactivity and improving economic and social prosperity. A participatory approach will also be used to engage 'hidden unemployed' groups. Benefiting from a cross-sectoral, cross-departmental and multi-disciplinary team (and extended partnerships), this project will deliver evidence-based insights which will inform policy and programme design targeting at economic inactivity, undertake capacity building activities across the public, community and business sectors and stimulate increased knowledge sharing, learning and greater collaborative working which will have both social and economic impacts for citizens across all of NI.