The “just managing” need deeds, not words

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Theresa May has identified the fortunes of “just about managing” working families as her priority in post-Brexit Britain. A new government’s rhetoric precedes real outcomes against which it can be judged. But from one point of view, May’s talk about the low-paid looks well timed. Employment remains on an upward march, and after the longest … Continued

Waging war on non-compliance

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Big policy wins – those that shift the argument among politicos and have a real impact on people’s lives – are few and far between. Ask commentators to name the biggest success in recent decades and the National Minimum Wage (NMW) would be a top choice. So much so that last summer the Conservative chancellor … Continued

Has our jobs recovery reached a plateau?

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Despite the noise, the news in today’s labour market data is not the slight increase in unemployment. This hasn’t stopped people linking the unemployment increase to Brexit fears, or suggesting that it’s actually a good thing. No, in fact the real story – which for obvious reasons the headline writers failed to get excited about … Continued

One billion hours: what’s happening to the working week?

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Towards the end of 2015 the jobs market passed an important-sounding milestone – we now work more than one billion hours each week. This has been wholly driven by strong employment growth because at the individual level average weekly hours have actually fallen slightly over the past year, reversing the upward trend of the previous … Continued

Five things we’ve learned from today’s earnings figures (and one thing we haven’t)

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After a longer and deeper pay squeeze than even the most pessimistic of economists would have predicted, 2015 marks the year when pay growth finally returned. Today’s publication of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE)  – our least timely but most comprehensive source on employee pay – gives us the opportunity to lift … Continued

The rise and rise (?) of zero hours contracts

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For many, zero hours contracts (ZHCs) are emblematic of the UK’s labour market experience during the financial crash, contributing to stronger-than-expected employment figures but also symbolising rising job insecurity. But with the economic recovery now gaining ground, the key question has been whether they’d fade away or remain as a permanent feature of the labour … Continued

Pay

Is a pay boom coming and if not, why not?

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Rarely has the trope that a week is a long time in politics rung truer. But yesterday we learned that an hour is a long time in economics. The latest employment statistics are unambiguously encouraging. Employment rose and unemployment fell, strengthening trends in place over the past couple of years. Perhaps more significantly, rising nominal … Continued

Pay

What’s holding back nominal wage growth?

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Today’s statistics mark another welcome step along the road in our long-overdue earnings recovery. A gentle improvement in regular pay in the three months to February 2015 (now 1.8 per cent, with the total pay measure that includes bonuses close by at 1.7 per cent), against a backdrop of inflation having fallen to 0 per … Continued

Hollowing out – deeper than it sounds

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It’s rare that technical economic concepts make their way out of the halls of academia and into the mainstream. Yet the idea that labour markets in advanced economies are increasingly ‘polarising’ between ‘lovely’ and ‘lousy’ jobs – with middle-of-the-road jobs being ‘hollowed out’ and wage inequality rising as a result – is one that has … Continued

Households have been coping remarkably well with high housing costs, but interest rate rises lurk just around the corner

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The lack of affordable housing, particularly in London and the South East, is one of Britain’s most-told misery stories. But less is known about how these challenges differ for various household types and, perhaps more importantly, how people cope with them. New research by the Resolution Foundation seeks to deal with both of these questions. … Continued

The ‘housing pinched’: Which UK households are most at risk of falling over the edge?

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Reading the housing headlines recently you could be forgiven for breathing a sigh of relief. House prices have showed signs of cooling in recent months, thought to be partly down to tighter mortgage lending rules that have dampened down demand. In addition, at least outside of the South, private rents have been through a year of below-inflation increases on both government and many commercial indices. … 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

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