Two Million Jobs: How businesses play a crucial role in helping people from welfare into work - the full report

Read the full report, Two Million Jobs: How businesses play a crucial role in helping people from welfare into work.

After almost a year of work, interviewing hundreds of businesses and community leaders across Great Britain, the Jobs Foundation is launching its foundational research research - a report entitled Two Million Jobs: How businesses play a crucial role in helping people from welfare into work. The paper covers two main topics: how businesses play a key role in getting people from welfare into work via best practice, and what policy conditions businesses need to thrive.

This is not a paper written at a desk in London, created by searching through ONS data and then drawing conclusions in the abstract. Two Million Jobs is an ethnographic study of businesses in Britain, learning what we can from their stories directly. We visited a city (Sheffield), a town (Loughborough), a coastal community (Hartlepool) and a rural community (Pembrokeshire) to get a good array of different sectors covered in all relevant environments. The result is a snapshot of businesses in Britain in 2024 - what they are doing to create jobs and growth, as well as what they need in policy terms to be able to do even more on this front.

The title of the report derives from a government policy to bring two million people currently unemployed into a vocation. We've estimated that this could bring in an extra £20 billion of revenue to the HMRC per year. That's before you get onto the savings to the Treasury in terms of the reduced welfare costs, and without accounting for any multiplier effects of having that many more people in work (such as the amount of money that would be pumped into the greater economy, having two million more people in the country with disposable income).

So many interesting stories abound within the pages of Two Million Jobs, picking any one out seems unfair to the rest. But there is a notable quote from an interviewee, Adrian Lort-Phillips of Lawrenny, Pembrokeshire, that summarises the message of the report nicely:

“When I was a kid, we learned about and celebrated people like Isambard Kingdom Brunel. You know, people who built things. We don't have that culture anymore.”

We need to reward and encourage the doers in our society. Britain needs to reward hard work and determination. That's the way towards growth. That's the way out of poverty for our poorest citizens. That's the way back towards the greatness this country always has deep within itself. We hope you enjoy reading this report – and look out for us deepening what is laid out here in greater detail in the Jobs Foundation's research in 2025 and beyond.

We'd also love to have your feedback - thoughts on the report, any ideas on how we should take our research forward, and recommendations around other businesses we should connect with. Send your thoughts to info@thejobsfoundation.com.

Read the full report, Two Million Jobs: How businesses play a crucial role in helping people from welfare into work.