Matthew Whittaker

To avoid squeezed households struggling, we must beware of premature interest rate rises

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Thursday’s interest rate announcement from the Monetary Policy Committee is unlikely to generate many headlines. “Bank does nothing for 65th straight month” is hardly a circulation-booster, even during silly season. But we can expect plenty of speculation alongside the announcement that the consensus among MPC members on holding rates will have been broken for the first time since … Continued

Once interest rates start rising, how can indebted households be helped through the painful transition?

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Whether it is this autumn, the New Year or shortly after next May’s election, everyone knows that interest rates are going to start rising sometime relatively soon. Yet despite the endless “guess the month” speculation about the precise timing of the first rise, little thought has actually been given to the bigger and longer-term question … Continued

Matthew Whittaker

Living standards: what happens next?

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Going into next year’s election – the ‘living standards election’ – party political strategists are likely to fret about the length of voters’ memories. When asked whether the government has made them better off, will they compare their position with last year or with five years ago? The depth of the decline in incomes associated … Continued

By omitting the earnings of one in seven workers from jobs data, our economic policymakers are operating in the dark

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Whether you view the self-employed as the silent victims of our invidious jobs market or emblems of a new spirit of entrepreneurialism spreading through society, what is beyond doubt is that the ranks of those working for themselves are swelling by the day. The numbers have grown by a staggering 700,000 since the financial crisis. … Continued

Matthew Whittaker

The Bank’s conundrum countdown – Tightening policy in the shadow of a debt overhang

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If Mary Poppins taught us anything, it’s that a British bank is run with precision. But against a backdrop of rapidly changing and sometimes conflicting economic data, the balancing act currently facing the Bank of England requires a level of calibration rarely before seen. Clearly monetary policy must be tightened over the coming months and … Continued

Pay

Deconstructing the wages data

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It might not hold quite the same broad appeal as the start of the World Cup, but today’s labour market statistics release from the ONS has been hotly anticipated nonetheless, given the centrality of this data to our understanding of the economic recovery and the timing of interest rate increases. The overwhelmingly positive news we’ve … Continued

Laura Gardiner interview on self-employment

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The Resolution Foundation is an independent research and policy organisation with a goal to improve living standards for the 15 million people in Britain on low and middle incomes. To achieve this they conduct rigorous research, analysis and policy development to inform public debates and influence key decision makers in government, the private sector, and … Continued

The risks and rewards of being self-employed

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Since the recession, the Yorkshire and Humber region has added 14,000 employees but an extra 22,000 self-employed people. It looks as if higher levels of self-employment are here to stay but our research suggests that while most of the self-employed prefer being their own boss, they often struggle with accessing basics such as housing and … Continued

Matthew Whittaker
Pay

Turning the corner: understanding this week’s wage data

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After nearly six years in which wage growth has been consistently outstripped by inflation, expectation is building that this week will mark an official end to the pay squeeze. As the chart below shows, the gap between the Office for National Statistics’ Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation measures has been narrowing … Continued

Will the welfare cap stand the test of time?

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George Osborne’s welfare cap will be voted on tomorrow. It’s viewed by many as a moment of reckoning for Labour in which it will be caught in a deadly trap: support eye-wateringly tight and binding proposals that threaten the future of the welfare state or oppose them and stand exposed as the believers in big … Continued

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