Companies should "hire a hoodie" to tackle the UK's jobs crisis as "surly young men can be turned into excited and motivated young employees", the Employment Minister has said.

In comments that echo David Cameron’s "hug a hoodie" speech of 2006, Employment Minister Chris Grayling told employers to prioritise local youths who look “unwilling to work” over Eastern Europeans.

He launched a new drive to get more people into work as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that unemployment has fallen by 35,000 this quarter - the first decline in almost a year.

Mr Grayling on Wednesday urged British companies to “put local recruits first” and not go for the "easy" option of hiring older and more experienced Eastern Europeans, in a speech to the Policy Exchange, a thinktank.

He said: “It’s easy to hire someone from Eastern Europe with five years experience and who has had the get up and go to cross a continent in search for work. And many employers do so.

“But those who look closer to home find gems too. Very often the surly young man in a hoodie who turns up looking unwilling to work can turn into an excited and motivated employee. It’s all about the expectations that they have, and the place they come from. And employers who give them that chance find it enormously rewarding.”

"So I stand foursquare behind my hope that British employers will put local recruits first."

The fall in overall unemployment has been bolstered by a large increase of 80,000 in the number of people working part time in the three months to February, the ONS figures showed. The number of people with full-time jobs actually fell by 27,000.

The number of unemployed women rose by 8,000 over the quarter to reach 1.14 million, the highest figure in 25 years.

Experts said that the increase in female unemployment is because of the large number of women who work in the public sector, which has suffered severe cutbacks in recent years.

The long-term unemployed - those out of work for over a year - jumped by 26,000 to 883,000, the highest number since 1996.

(Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)