EE’s bringing 1,000 jobs to the UK – but it’s a double-edged sword
EE, Britain’s biggest mobile operator, says it’ll create more than 1,000 jobs in the UK over the next two years, reshoring customer service jobs that have been based abroad.
The firm also said it’s tripling the size of its apprenticeship scheme to 1,300 by the end of 2015.
This morning, figures showed the UK’s unemployment rate inched up to 7.2 per cent in the three months to December, despite expectations it’d remain unchanged.
EE says growing its apprenticeship scheme will help tackle youth unemployment. From October to December 2013, the unemployment rate among 16 to 24 year olds fell one per cent to 19.9 per cent – that’s 917,000 people (although 31 per cent were in full-time education).
EE’s relocation scheme has been welcomed by the Prime Minister:
It’s great news that EE is bringing over 1,000 jobs back to the UK. As part of our long term economic plan, I believe we can become the world’s leading reshoring nation and provide new opportunities for hard working people.
Of course, while EE will provide welcome opportunities and training, reshoring may not be as straightforward as the notion of returning jobs to the UK.
For starters, jobs don’t ‘belong’ in one place – it means losing jobs elsewhere and rests on the fallacy that labour in an economy needs to be rebalanced (as David Cameron has repeatedly stressed).
What’s more, many low-skilled jobs left the UK in response to an increasingly skilled workforce.
And it can also result in higher labour and regulatory costs for businesses who had originally moved abroad to get costs down.