Just one thousand youngsters have found a job through a government scheme to help employers pay their costs, the cabinet’s youth unemployment czar said on Friday.

Mirjam Sterk has now asked the state run job centres to do more to alert employers to the fund, which entitles companies to a €3,500 annual discount on worker insurance policies if they take on a jobless youngster.

Ministers say some 28,000 youngsters qualify for the discount but so far only just over 1,000 have found work. The scheme runs until January 2016.

Some 122,000 under-25s are officially unemployed in the Netherlands, around 15% of the total, according to the national statistics office CBS.