Our friends across the ocean have come up with a way to provide thousands of entry level jobs to young workers.

UK Culture Secretary Andy Burnham and James Purnell, work and pensions secretary, recently announced a plan to create up to 10,000 entry level jobs for young people in the cultural industries.

The Department for Work and Pensions will provide 1.1 billion from its Future Jobs Fund to theaters and other arts institutions looking to hire young workers. The fund was launched to support 150,000 jobs throughout all sectors, with between 5,000 and 10,000 in the cultural industries.

Available jobs will be in the form of apprenticeships or on-the-job training and will receive at least the national minimum wage. Those who are 18 to 24-years old and have been out of work for up to a year are eligible to apply for positions, according to an article by The Stage.

The first wave of funding will help create 200 jobs for young people working with music festivals this summer. Funding will be given to other industries later this year and early 2010. Funding will be allocated on a case by case basis and organizations must bid for money.

“It’s made very clear to you when you are made a minister in this department that basically your job is to get the money in," Purnell said in the article. "And I want to pay tribute to Andy for the completely ruthless way he has extracted this money from the DWP. If we get this right, this can be a bigger injection of money into the creative and sporting sectors than anything that was achieved in recent comprehensive spending reviews.”