At a time of rapid labour market and demographic change, ensuring adults have access to high quality careers guidance to support them into the right jobs is key. There are approximately 4.5 million adults in the UK who are either looking to change jobs, at risk in their current role, or who are ‘very unhappy’ in their work. As a society and an economy there is an overwhelming case to improve people’s careers options and opportunities through effective careers guidance.

Finding the right next job isn’t always easy, and the support of skilled career guidance professionals can make a huge difference to helping someone progress in their careers and make the best use of their skills. While we have transformed the career guidance offer for young people over recent decades, we haven’t yet done the same for adult career guidance in England, despite the fact that existing adult workers (rather than new school and college leavers) will make up the overwhelming bulk of our future workforce.

Drawing on academic experts, policy makers and career guidance practitioners, we have developed new economic modelling to understand the size of the prize of better adult career guidance, and steps to make the change a reality.

The potential size of the prize

Better careers guidance has the potential to support people to move and change jobs in ways that benefit them, the economy and the Exchequer. Using groups previously identified by The Gatsby Foundation who could potentially benefit from improved career guidance, in particular those who want to move jobs, are at risk of redundancy, are unhappy at work, or whose skills don’t match their current role. If improved career guidance were to lead to better outcomes for these groups, then after a five year transitional period, there is the potential to boost annual UK GDP by up to:

• £15 billion by reducing rates of skills mismatching in the economy (through closing the gap with international comparators)
• £2.5 billion through improved productivity and output by supporting people very unhappy at work to find jobs which improve their wellbeing and allowed them to reach their full potential

There are other potential economic benefits that could occur during this transitional period. Over the next five years there is the potential for a cumulative:

• £570 million boost to GDP, and £420 million in additional exchequer revenue through income tax and national insurance by successfully supporting career changers to change job
• £1.9 billion boost to GDP by successfully supporting workers at risk of redundancy, as well as £80 million reduction in Job Seekers Allowance payments

Making the change

The Government has recognised the benefits of improving career guidance in its ambitions to reform the welfare and employment system. It intends to do this by creating a new National Jobs and Careers Service which would bring together the currently separate functions of the National Careers Service and Jobcentre Plus. This has great potential to improve the delivery of adult career guidance by rebranding and extending the reach of the government funded offer to new groups and shifting perceptions of it across society and the wider economy.

This report proposes seven design principles for how the new National Jobs and Careers Service should implement a new approach to career guidance, arguing that it needs to:

1. Rebrand and extend the reach of publicly funded career guidance to a wider range of people
2. Proactively target those who could benefit from career guidance
3. Invest in capacity, technology and the workforce
4. Provide high profile leadership for the career guidance sector
5. Deliver a national service in a local context
6. Integrate into wider government policy
7. Focus on long term impact