John Boumphrey
Amazon’s UK chief has said young people should not be blamed for rising unemployment levels, arguing the education system is failing to prepare them for work.John Boumphrey, Amazon’s UK country manager, said businesses across the country were struggling to recruit workers with the skills they need despite nearly a million young people in Britain being out of education, employment or training.Speaking to the BBC, Boumphrey rejected claims that younger generations lacked motivation or resilience.“We have to stop blaming young people,” he said.“It’s not a motivation problem, it’s a system problem, and that requires a system response.”Official figures released this week showed the UK unemployment rate rose to 5 per cent in the three months to March, up slightly from 4.9 per cent in the previous reporting period, as BBC cited.Young people have been particularly affected by a slowdown in hiring, with fewer hospitality jobs and cuts to graduate recruitment schemes contributing to a weaker labour market.Boumphrey said Amazon was facing the opposite challenge, struggling to recruit enough workers for technical and engineering roles.Amazon currently employs around 75,000 people in the UK, according to Boumphrey, with roughly half joining directly from education or unemployment. He argued that schools and colleges were not equipping students with practical workplace skills and called for work experience placements to become compulsory for everyone over the age of 16.He said work experience helps young people develop communication, teamwork and problem-solving abilities that employers increasingly expect.“If you get a T-level student, they come in for a week, they understand the value of teamwork, of communication and problem solving,” he said during the BBC’s Big Boss interview.Boumphrey also called for closer cooperation between businesses, local authorities and further education colleges to address regional skills shortages.“I think you need businesses to come together with local governments and further education colleges,” he said.“You need that to happen on a regional basis so that you can understand what the skills gaps are.”Amazon operates around 100 sites across the UK, including 30 warehouses.Boumphrey said the company had seen growing demand for technicians and engineering specialists as automation and robotics expanded across its warehouses, adding that Amazon was struggling to recruit enough people to fill those positions.
