Living standards· Incomes· Labour market How to get family incomes growing again 16 April 2018 by Torsten Bell Lots of things matter for family incomes – but for British households as a whole nothing matters as much as the labour market. Questions of who has a job and what they get paid for doing it might not be the only determinant of our living standards – but they are certainly the first. … Continued READ MORE
Overconfident zombies, undertaxed wealth and generation rent hits middle age Top of the Charts 13 April 2018 Sign up for our weekly Top of the Charts emails here While you await your lunchtime pint (or Pret at your desk, depending on your commitment to raising the UK’s productivity levels) here’s some reading to tide you over the weekend. We cover the synchronised swimming of house prices and the fact that even the OECD … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay Three tips on how to get a pay rise 9 April 2018 by Stephen Clarke How do you get a pay rise? This is a question most of us would like to know the answer to. Especially seeing as, following the financial crisis, we’ve experienced the worst squeeze on wages in over a hundred years. Typical weekly earnings are £15 lower than they were in 2009, and by 2020 we … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Skills The story of recent apprenticeship reforms so far: a fall in quantity, but an increase in quality 29 March 2018 by Kathleen Henehan and Helena Rose Before long the apprenticeship levy – the focus of much of the debate around post-16 education – will be a year old. Yet there’s more to the apprenticeships story than the levy. Since last April, all apprentices are required to spend at least 20 per cent of their time on off-the-job training and they must … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Incomes· Inequality & poverty What today’s household income figures tell us about 2016-17 22 March 2018 by Adam Corlett The best results can take time. We already have data for what happened to employment, prices and earnings in early 2018, but for a detailed look at household incomes the latest official data – out today – is for 2016-17. What does this release tell us about living standards, poverty and inequality back when The … Continued READ MORE
Social mobility· Intergenerational Centre Today’s problems of intergenerational inequality risk becoming tomorrow’s big social mobility divide 12 March 2018 by Fahmida Rahman Launching a review of higher education recently, the Prime Minister spoke of her wish to make the UK a country ‘where your background does not define your future’. Naturally, education is almost always pitched as the key to upward social mobility – but to what extent does it really level the playing field? It is … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Low pay· Pay Are Sainsbury’s pay proposals a sign of things to come in low-paying sectors? 7 March 2018 by Conor D’Arcy Sainsbury’s has announced proposals to boost its base pay, from £8 per hour to £9.20. This, of course, is important news for the 130,000 people who work there, even if it won’t be welcomed by every one of them, as explored below. But the action Sainsbury’s has taken – and the ways it has outlined … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay When it comes to pay ratios, it’s time to choose meaningful medians not meaningless means 14 February 2018 by Conor D’Arcy and Stephen Clarke Back in the dog days of last summer, the Government announced a package of reforms to corporate governance. Among those reforms was the welcome requirement for “listed companies… to publish pay ratios between chief executives and their average UK worker”. On the back of gender pay gap reporting and the commitment to transparency expressed in … Continued READ MORE
Wealth & assets· Intergenerational Centre How to solve the UK’s growing wealth gaps 8 February 2018 by Torsten Bell This year, average wages are set to be flat. British households, meanwhile, are in the middle of a projected four-year income stagnation. And our productivity has barely risen since the 2008 financial crisis. Pay, incomes, productivity – that all are flatlining is the defining feature of our economics and our politics today. There’s a reason … Continued READ MORE
Labour market Deeds not words – what we needed from the government’s response to the Taylor Review today 7 February 2018 by Torsten Bell Yesterday, Britain celebrated the success of the ‘deeds not words’ campaign that won women the vote. Today, we have something of the opposite in the government’s response to last summer’s Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices. It’s not nothing, but those hoping for a bold new dawn in the rules that govern Britain’s labour market … Continued READ MORE
Tax· Welfare· Intergenerational Centre To maintain our welfare state we need to rethink how we pay for it 5 February 2018 by Torsten Bell Social democracy gave 20th Century Britain the welfare state. But in the 21st Century it’s wandered off for a long post-crisis snooze, just at the time when big challenges to that welfare state are looming into view. It’s time it woke up because, for a new generation of social democrats, there is work to do. … Continued READ MORE
Wealth & assets Seven key takeaways on the level, profile and distribution of Britain’s £12.8 trillion of wealth 1 February 2018 by Conor D’Arcy We get monthly updates on pay and authoritative data on household incomes every year. But we have to wait two years for a detailed breakdown of what’s happening to wealth across Britain. Here are seven key takeaways from the latest data published today and what it tells us about changes in the level, profile and … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Skills The latest data on Apprenticeship starts offers cause for hope and concern 25 January 2018 by Kathleen Henehan This morning the Department for Education published figures outlining the number and type of apprenticeships that were commenced during the first quarter (August to October) of the 2017-18 academic year – the second quarter since the apprenticeship levy came into place last Spring. Inevitably, much of the focus today will be on numbers: how the … Continued READ MORE
Labour market Reading the runes on Britain’s labour market 24 January 2018 by Stephen Clarke The UK labour market has shifted into different gears over the last decade. The first – and most dramatic – move happened early in 2009 when real pay began to fall for the first time in decades. Early in 2012 the jobs market bottomed out and five years of nearly uninterrupted employment growth began. 2015 … Continued READ MORE
Incomes· Living standards· Prices & consumption Hey big spender! 18 January 2018 by Stephen Clarke Todays’ annual Family Spending release contains the usual treasure trove of information on what UK households spent their money on last year. Households spent a lot. Average weekly spending rose (after adjusting for inflation) by 4 per cent from £533 to £554 between 2015-16 and 2016-17 – the sharpest increase for well over a decade … Continued READ MORE
Welfare Five big calls on Universal Credit for the new Work and Pensions Secretary 11 January 2018 by David Finch A new year brings with it a new Work and Pensions Secretary, with Esther McVey the fourth incumbent since Iain Duncan Smith stepped down in January 2016. For a department in the midst of rolling-out Universal Credit (UC), a radical reform of social security, change at the top brings both opportunity and risk. UC delivery … Continued READ MORE
Pensions & savings· Intergenerational Centre Auto-enrolment has had a great beginning. But will it have a happy ending? 18 December 2017 by David Finch We hear a lot about good policy plans gone wrong (Universal Credit springs to mind) for obvious reasons. But we ought to listen (and learn) from successes too. Auto-enrolment into workplace pension savings is the obvious candidate for this cheery policy tale, though the story has only just begun. Over nine million have signed up … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Productivity & industrial strategy ‘The rise of the robots’ and ‘productivity pessimism’ can’t both be right 14 December 2017 by Adam Corlett Talk of looming automation, AI and robots is pervasive in public policy chat – including in the government’s new industrial strategy. Almost as common are projections that the weak growth of the past decade is here to stay – including in the latest official economic outlook. Sometimes these assumptions are even mentioned in the same … Continued READ MORE
Labour market Icebreakers, overtime and the squeezed middle 12 December 2017 by Torsten Bell One of the wonders of life is that there are a lot of things to talk about. But one of its big let downs is that when people regularly spend time together they often spend it talking about the same old things; the weather, what mutual acquaintances have been up to, the rest. But every … Continued READ MORE
Demographics· Living standards· Pensions & savings What could the latest life expectancy projections mean for the State Pension Age? 5 December 2017 by David Finch At the end of last week, the ONS published the latest future projections showing its best estimate of how long we can expect to live. We don’t automatically associate our living standards with factors like health or how many years of life we may have. But just like income, life expectancy is an important indicator … Continued READ MORE
Productivity & industrial strategy· Labour market· Skills Britain’s skills record has hindered, not helped, our productivity drive. That needs to change 30 November 2017 by Kathleen Henehan Over the last week, we’ve heard a lot about the need to boost Britain’s productivity and how education and training can support that drive. First we had welcome new funding commitments in the Budget, then a strong skills focus in the Industrial Strategy White Paper and today we have a Skills Summit. Throughout, the Government … Continued READ MORE
Housing· Intergenerational Centre Will building more homes help to reduce housing costs? 21 November 2017 by Kate Barker and Neal Hudson As part of the Foundation’s ongoing housing work, leading economist and Intergenerational Commission member Kate Barker and Housing market analyst Neal Hudson write about the impact that boosting housing supply could have on prices and wider housing costs. Since the mid-2000s the dominant narrative about housing in the UK has been around a shortage … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Scotland· Tax Will the (Scottish) Budget raise income tax rates? 20 November 2017 by Adam Corlett With the UK Budget imminent, it’s important not to forget proposals released in Scotland earlier this month. These could lead to increases in income tax rates as soon as April, intended to protect public services and benefits in Scotland. This would be a departure from the usual direction of travel in the UK: there has … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Economy and public finances It’s time to stop feeling sorry for the Chancellor – there’s no excuse for a do nothing Budget 20 November 2017 by Torsten Bell It’s all the rage to feel sorry for Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. Philip Hammond is an unlucky man we’re told, having to prepare a Budget against a backdrop of a weaker economy, worse public finances and pressure to relaunch a government that’s had a tough Autumn. Those pressures are real, and no-one’s doubting that … Continued READ MORE
Labour market We need to put the changing world of work back in the spotlight 20 November 2017 by Conor D’Arcy Angst over diminishing attention spans is widespread these days, with the reaction to Twitter’s expansion to 280 characters a case in point. That’s long been true in politics: even the most important of issues need a regular drumbeat to maintain public interest. And it certainly applies to the problems highlighted by the Taylor Review of … Continued READ MORE
