Covid-19
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Low pay
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Any further questions?

From 'From loud claps to hard cash A new settlement for Britain’s low-paid workers'

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We often have more questions submitted for our event Q&A sessions than we’re able to answer. Where this is the case, we’ll endeavour to respond to a selection of the most interesting or most representative questions that went unanswered. The questions below were submitted to our panel for the event From loud claps to hard … Continued

Low pay
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Pay
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Wealth & assets
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Political parties and elections

Question Time’s £80K man was wrong about the top 5%. But the super-rich are on another planet

Those in his earning bracket have far more in common with workers on average pay than they do with the 1%

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f you live in Bolton and earn more than £80,000, you’re rich compared with your neighbours. Really rich. The average pay for all workers is just £22,000 and one in four earns less than £15,000. And yes, you’re still rich among the country as a whole: only 5% of earners make more than £80,000 – … Continued

A good year for pay?

Five things we learned from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2019

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This morning the ONS published the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) for 2019 – the most detailed data on employee pay available, telling us about high and low pay, the gender pay gap, and more besides. As a think-tank focusing on raising living standards, this is pretty crucial data for us, and for … Continued

Low pay
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Pay

A rare political consensus has broken out over a higher minimum wage – but achieving it is far from straightforward

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The politics of the minimum wage don’t exactly fit our lazy stereotypes. Back in the pre-crisis days of supposed consensus, debates raged about whether the policy was right or wrong. Today, when political divides are huge, everyone is falling over themselves to agree that a higher minimum wage is the way to go. The Chancellor … Continued

Tackling the new frontiers of low pay

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Bad policies get the most attention. Whole books have been written on government interventions that achieved the exact opposite of what they intended, or eventually delivered at miles over budget. That’s why the UK’s minimum wage – effective, popular and cheap – is such a rare thing. The latest evidence confirms the minimum wage’s continued … Continued

The Autumn Budget 2017 brings worse than hoped for news for the low paid

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or many people, the big news out of November’s Budget – a massive downgrade in the outlook for productivity growth – will sound a bit abstract. The productivity downgrade has made the Chancellor’s task of balancing the books harder. But its impact on pay – with average annual earnings lowered by £1,000 – mean it’s even … Continued

The national living wage has caused the biggest fall in low pay in 40 years – but how is this improving people’s living standards?

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Employment is at a 40-year high, while pay is stagnating. That, in brief, sums up the last few years of changes in Britain’s labour market. As Figure 1 shows, politicians rightly highlight that employment and unemployment are undeniably trending in the right direction. But the good news on employment has failed drastically to translate into … Continued

The latest on low pay

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To paraphrase the great Yogi Berra, making predictions is hard. That’s especially true of the future of the UK’s labour market. After all, the current combination of record high employment and falling real wages is not a forecast many economists would’ve made even a couple of years ago. But new Annual Survey of Hours and … Continued

How did firms pay for the big pay rise in 2016? Through productivity and price rises, not job losses

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2016 marked the introduction of a big, controversial new player on the political economy scene, whose influence is set to grow and grow over the next four years. No, this isn’t a blog about President-Elect Trump. For millions of low earners across the UK, another development has had an even bigger impact. The National Living … Continued

No jobs-killer as employers take a ‘suck it and see’ approach to the National Living Wage

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With all the economic and political tumult of the past couple of weeks, the launch of the National Living Wage (NLW) already feels a long time ago. But it’s only been three months since the government’s flagship labour market policy came into force. As with Brexit, we’ll need to wait before judging the full impact … Continued

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