Incomes· Living standards· 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
Housing· Tax· Intergenerational Centre Council tax is a farce – it’s time for a real property tax 21 March 2018 by Laura Gardiner It’s an open secret that council tax is a dog’s dinner. It was conjured up in the early 1990s as a half-way house between the hated ‘poll tax’ and the old domestic rates system, meaning those in top-band properties have much lower tax rates than those in cheaper homes. In England and Scotland, it is … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay Not quite pay growth party-time yet 21 March 2018 by Stephen Clarke Today the ONS published the latest pay growth figures covering the year to January. These, along with yesterday’s inflation data, suggest that the squeeze which has dragged down real pay for twelve months is finally over. However, at the risk of sounding Eeyore-ish, pay growth is likely to remain subdued for the rest of the … Continued READ MORE
Housing· Tax· Intergenerational Centre It’s time to properly abolish the ‘poll tax’ 20 March 2018 by Adam Corlett What is Britain’s most badly designed tax? A leading contender has to be council tax. It’s a tax based on 27 year old house valuations, but this isn’t even the biggest problem. Council tax would bear little relation to property values even if it were revalued. Typical council tax bills for the most expensive homes … 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
Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances What Philip Hammond will say today: the deficit is dead, long live the debt 12 March 2018 by Torsten Bell Philip Hammond is going to give a very short speech at the Spring Statement today. There will be none of the tax and spending announcements we are used to when Chancellors rise to the Despatch Box. But short and largely announcement free as it will be, tomorrow’s speech will nonetheless represent something very significant for … 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
Social care· Wealth & assets· Welfare· Intergenerational Centre Baby boomers are going to have to pay more tax on their wealth to fund health and social care 5 March 2018 by David Willetts In the past decade a new issue has entered British politics – fairness between the generations. It straddles the conventional political divide. The Prime Minister has spoken of “a growing divide between a more prosperous older generation and a struggling younger generation”. And the leader of the Labour Party has argued that future generations should … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Living standards· Inequality & poverty· Economy and public finances Should the Office for Budget Responsibility also forecast inequality? 2 March 2018 by Adam Corlett The strengths and weaknesses of economic forecasting are under scrutiny, perhaps like never before. How might GDP perform under different Brexit policies compared to a world with no Brexit? Is unemployment now likely to rise or fall? What will public borrowing in 2022 be? Whatever your politics, such modelling and forecasting is indispensable – so … Continued READ MORE
Labour market The UK’s tight labour market and zero hours contracts 21 February 2018 by Daniel Tomlinson After five years of rapid increases, the number of people working on a zero hours contract has flat-lined in the UK over the past year. A tighter labour market may not yet be delivering increases in real pay, but it is slowly reshaping the type of work that we do for the better. It’s also … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Intergenerational Centre “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” – UK generational trends in an international context 19 February 2018 by Daniel Tomlinson and Fahmida Rahman Joni Mitchell’s lyrics may refer to her first trip to Hawaii, but they could just as easily apply to UK trends in generational living standards that the Resolution Foundation’s Intergenerational Commission has uncovered. That’s particularly so in light of new analysis comparing these trends internationally. While there are huge living standards differences between high-income countries, … 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
Housing Time for some housing honesty 2 January 2018 by Matthew Whittaker The return to work after Christmas is never easy. Unless you’re an estate agent: they love January. Following the pre-Christmas lull, families rush back into wanting to buy and sell their houses (helped in part by the traditional post-festivity spike in family breakdown). But for an increasing number of us, house hunting is becoming little … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay 2018 risks being a standstill year on pay 27 December 2017 by Torsten Bell 2018 looks set to be a standstill year. On the biggest political issue of our time we will spend all 365 days of it leaving, but not out, of the EU. It also looks set to be a standstill year for our economy as most people experience it – on pay and employment we may … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay Unwrapping the agency worker pay penalty 21 December 2017 by Lindsay Judge Christmas is coming – and many of the presents we’re all busy buying are being picked and packed in warehouses, delivered by drivers, or sold to us in shops by staff who are not directly employed, but who work through an agency instead. So how has this part of the workforce fared over the course … 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
