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

There’s much uncertainty about a ‘No Deal’ Brexit, but what we do know would be bad for living standards

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Big change, means big uncertainty. Especially when that big change is being brought to the complex beast that is a major developed country in the 21st Century. To complicate the task further, in the case of Brexit Britain while we know big change is coming, we don’t know what form that big change will actually … Continued

Let it go Chancellor. Why Philip Hammond should revisit the benefit freeze in next month’s Budget

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The weather might be un-seasonally warm just now, but millions of household budgets are in the grip of a four-year freeze that’s about to get colder still. For decades, the government’s default position has been to uprate the value of working-age benefits each April in line with the rate of inflation prevailing in the previous … Continued

Did raising tuition fees flatter measurements of young people’s incomes?

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The government has announced that the maximum annual tuition fee will be frozen at £9,250; and that the earnings threshold for repayment will jump from £21,000 to £25,000. What’s more, there will be a wide review of student finances to “look again” at this turbulent political issue. While they’re doing that, government statisticians should look … Continued

Matthew Whittaker

The living standards cost of the OBR’s newfound productivity pessimism

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Rumours of attempts within the Cabinet to remove Philip Hammond may or may not be wide of the mark. But given the recent steady flow of disappointing economic data, the Chancellor could be forgiven for wanting to walk before he’s pushed. Last week’s PMI data and today’s short-term indicators from the ONS both suggested that … Continued

Black and ethnic minority workers needs a bigger living standards reward for their astounding progress in getting degrees

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On Tuesday, the Government will publish an audit of race disparity across public service outcomes. The data, which will be publicly available, outlines race-based inequality in health, education and employment services, and within the criminal justice system. This is a very welcome development: previous Resolution Foundation research found that such disparities are very real when … Continued

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