Wickes boss tells Andy Burnham to make it easier to hire young people again as it plans new stores

The boss of Wickes has become the latest retail chief to urge the Government to make it easier to hire young people.

David Wood, the chief executive of the DIY retailer, echoed calls from major retailers for Andy Burnham to ease the costs associated with part-time and entry-level roles.

It has become ‘twice as expensive’ to employ someone compared to two years ago,  Wood told The Times.

He added: ‘Making it more affordable to employ would be helpful, and also maintaining the ability for us to manage a flexible workforce. Not only are 30 per cent of our colleagues in store aged 16 to 24, 45 per cent of them work on part-time hours because it suits their life.’

His remarks came after he revealed group revenues rose 2.1 per cent to £865.3million in the six months to the end of June, despite a difficult economic backdrop. 

The business said it also expects to have opened four to five new stores and refurbished 12 stores by the end of the year. 

Wickes plans to reach 300 stores and has also invested in digital sales, which it said had helped a significant improvement in trading.

It said its customers have not been ‘immune’ from cost-of-living pressures, including increased mortgage rates and energy costs.

But they ‘tend to be slightly older and more affluent than the UK average’, which has protected its sales while the rate of housing transactions ‘remains stable’.

Wickes reported profits before tax of £24.6million for the six months, up 1.7 per cent on the same period a year earlier, and it expects to meet market expectations with profits before tax up 10 per cent this year.

Youth unemployment has reached worrying levels amid a crisis of 16-24-year-olds who are ‘not in education, employment, or training’ – so-called NEETs.

In her first Budget in 2024, former chancellor Rachel Reeves increased the employer National Insurance contribution rate from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent and reduced the secondary threshold to £5,000.

This caused fury among retail and hospitality firms because it dragged many part-time and lower-paid staff into the tax for the first time.

Bosses have also complained after inflation-busting increases to the minimum wage over the past two years have driven up staff costs.

The Wickes boss’s comments come as Brewdog co-founder James Watt also hit out at the Prime Minister and said he should ‘get out of the way’ and help bosses by reducing the costs.

The entrepreneur, whose craft brewery business collapsed in March and was sold to US firm Tilray, criticised Burnham for stating that jobless youth have ‘been let down by an education system that told them there was only one route to success, and then left them without the opportunities to get their foot in the door anywhere else’.

Watt said that the Prime Minister ‘missed the mark’ and was not taking ‘ownership’ of its own role in making it less appealing for employers to hire young people.

He added: ‘There is also something deeply ironic about the government blaming “the system”, as though the Government is somehow separate from it, whilst all this Labour government has done is make it increasingly difficult and more expensive for businesses to employ people.’

The remarks echo those of Asda boss Allan Leighton, who last month said the Budget was an opportunity for the new Prime Minister and Chancellor to shift away from a model of heavy taxes on business which inhibits growth to one that enhances it.

‘This is a real tipping point: instead of just talking about growth, the government now has an opportunity to change tack and actually make growth happen,’ he said.

Just weeks ago, High Street retailers urged John Healey to roll back Rachel Reeves’ employer National Insurance raid to ‘turn the tide’ on unemployment.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) estimates that the policy has, together with rises in minimum wages, cost the sector £6.5billion and 115,000 jobs.

The BRC estimates the NICs threshold change cost £1.74billion. Major retailers, including Sainsbury’s and Tesco, have written to the Chancellor to ask him to raise the threshold to £6,000 to help firms hire more as it would undo some damage.