Fife Council is to appoint an ambassador for youth employment.
Administration leader Alex Rowley will put Lib Dem councillor Tony Martin forward for the role at the next meeting of the executive committee.
Mr Martin will be responsible for working with colleges and the private sector to help young people avoid the dole queue.
The council has pledged to make tackling youth unemployment a priority. It recently announced it would be investing £7.8 million into early years services and £5m over the next two years into creating apprenticeships for young people.
Mr Rowley said: ”The latest employment figures show why it is right that we focus on the local economy and why it is important to take decisive action to support young people to get apprenticeship places with employers.
”We will do this by building new relationships with employers and support them in the first and second year to take on an apprentice.
”This approach needs coordination and drive and I am delighted that Tony Martin has agreed to do this role becoming Fife’s ambassador for youth employment.”
The move was welcomed by Carnegie College chairman Bob Garmory and Bob Purvis, of Purvis Group.
Mr Martin said: ”Many young people are facing extremely difficult circumstances when leaving school. Because of the difficult economic outlook, jobs are hard to come by, places in further education are limited and apprentices placing are limited.
”Yet, if the Fife economy is to grow, we need these young people, well trained enthusiastic and capable of taking on the challenges of the future.”
Mr Purvis added: ”Alex Rowley has asked me to get involved in promoting this new initiative to employers and I am delighted that I will be working alongside Tony Martin to drive this agenda.
”We can’t just sit back and allow the young generation to lose out on employment chances because of the economic situation. I am sure that many employers of all sizes will welcome this new approach to supporting young people and will get involved.”