Single-lever policy simulation · labour economy

Apprenticeship & skills investment

~353k starts/yr (current)→~706k starts/yr (+100%)10-year projection

This report models the effect of raising apprenticeship & skills investment from ~353k starts/yr (current) to ~706k starts/yr (+100%) — with every other government policy left unchanged — on jobs, projected over 10 years.

Bottom line

Eases Vacancy fill rate, NHS staffing and Inequality, but worsens Fiscal pressure, Social care staffing and Political risk.

A single lever moved in isolation — which no real government does. Figures are modelled projections, not predictions. How the model works →

Direct effects

▲Vacancy fill rate

moderate improvement

Why: Domestic skills training fills vacancies without relying on migration. 1–4 year lag.

⏱ Effect builds over 2–3 years

▼Inequality

slight improvement

Why: Apprenticeship & skills investment has no short causal path to inequality in the model. Any movement you see is the tail end of long chains through shared composites (fiscal pressure, public satisfaction, political risk) and will be small.

⏱ Effect builds over 3–4 years

Knock-on effects

Reached indirectly, as the direct effects propagate through the system. Ordering reflects how the effect spreads, not a literal sequence in time.

▼NHS staffingslight

▲GDP strengthslight

▲Fiscal pressureslight

▲Social care staffingslight

▲Political riskslight

Model output — exact figures

Vacancy fill rate55 → 68 (+13)

NHS staffing73 → 71 (-2)

Inequality50 → 48 (-2)

GDP strength45 → 46 (+1)

Fiscal pressure61 → 62 (+1)

Social care staffing70 → 71 (+1)

Political risk60 → 61 (+1)

Index points on a 0–100 scale. Lower is better for pressure metrics; higher is better for outcomes like GDP and satisfaction.

See the full report for this change →Open the full simulator