Hard on the heels of August's riots in cities around the UK, the Government announced that the unemployment rate in the UK for the three months to June 2011 was 7.9 per cent of the economically active population. The number of unemployed people increased by 38,000 over the quarter, and thus reached 2.49 million.

Then, according to figures from the Department for Education (DfE), the proportion of 18 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training (NEETs) is now 18.4%. This figure, for the second quarter of 2011, is an increase from last year's second quarter figure of 16.3%, and is the highest second-quarter figure since 2006, when comparable data was first collected.

Michael Shane, Quasar's managing director, believes that "This increase in the number of unemployed in this country - especially NEETS - is further proof of the challenges facing workers and jobseekers as they seek to gain and keep employment."

"It looks like the labour market is a particularly tough place for young people at the moment", he adds. "At a time when school leavers will be looking for work and the number of job opportunities is falling, youth unemployment could increase more sharply in the coming months."

Quasar's contribution to help ease these people's employment problems is to offer them the opportunity to gain valuable IT skills - notably via Quasar's "Anytime" suite of performance- support online videos, which cover the most efficient and effective ways to use Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook in Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010.

Michael Shane pledges that "Anyone who's unemployed and who gets in touch with us at Quasar and mentions our special 'Get a Job' offer will be able to access either the '2007' or '2010' suite of the Anytime videos for just £49.95, including VAT. This is just 25% of the normal price."

"The benefit to these people of using the Anytime solution is that, because they can go back and replay their videos as many times as they want within the one year license, this reinforces the learning. This makes the learning experience more memorable than, say, going on a training course where you may hear and be shown something only once and then not have the chance to revisit it."

Central to the system is "My Anytime", a personal and customisable online portal to each user's learning programme that shows what online videos are available, what's been done, and what everybody else is doing.