Labour market· Pay Unstable Pay New estimates of earnings volatility in the UK 4 March 2025 by Mike Brewer and Nye Cominetti and Stephen P. Jenkins This report uses a newly available dataset – payroll data held by HM Revenue and Customs on over 250,000 working-age people covering April 2014 to March 2019 – to look at monthly and weekly volatility in employee pre-tax earnings. It is one of a very few UK studies to look at high-frequency earnings volatility on … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Prices & consumption· Pay· Housing· Wellbeing and mental health Pressure on pay, prices and properties How families were faring in October 2023 14 December 2023 by Mike Brewer and Felicia Odamtten and Hannah Slaughter and Hannah Slocombe and James Smith Two years into the cost of living crisis, inflation has finally turned a corner. The headline rate of CPI inflation has fallen from its October 2022 peak of 11.1 per cent to 4.6 per cent in October 2023, and the Prime Minister has been able to say that his target of halving inflation in 2023 … Continued READ MORE
Labour Market Outlook· Labour market· Pay Labour Market Outlook Q4 2023 What’s happening to pay growth? 12 December 2023 by Hannah Slaughter Over the course of 2023, the labour market has been gradually cooling on most measures. Even ignoring data from the Labour Force Survey that has recently been called into question, vacancies have been falling for 16 consecutive months and growth in payrolled employment has slowed. But nominal wage growth has remained resilient – even, since … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay· Living Wage Giving with one hand … Exploring the impact of minimum wage uprating in 2024 on living standards 4 November 2023 by Nye Cominetti At this year’s Conservative Party Conference, the Chancellor announced that the minimum wage would rise to at least £11 next year, up from its current rate of £10.42. But he may have under-promised. Using the standard uprating methodology, we estimate that the new adult-rate minimum wage could be as high as £11.46 in April 2024 … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay· Economic growth Wages are flatlining 22 March 2023 by Torsten Bell and Charlie McCurdy This Thursday, the Bank of England (BoE)’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meets. Discussion of whether the central bank has one final rate rise in it before pausing have focused on whether the Bank’s hand will be stayed by the instability we are seeing playing out in the banking sector from Silicon Valley to Switzerland (in … Continued READ MORE
Labour Market Outlook· Labour market· Pay Labour Market Outlook Q1 2022 How should we interpret strong nominal earnings growth? 9 April 2022 by Nye Cominetti and Karl Handscomb and Hannah Slaughter and Greg Thwaites In the first months of 2022, the labour market continued to tighten, with no sign of weakening in the aftermath of the JRS. Unemployment has fallen further, and stood at an almost-record low of 3.9 per cent in the three months to January 2022 – and although the Bank of England is concerned about unemployment … Continued READ MORE
Pay· Living Wage Calculating the Real Living Wage for London and the rest of the UK: 2021 15 November 2021 by Nye Cominetti This report sets out the method through which the Living Wage rates in London and the rest of the UK are calculated by the Resolution Foundation and overseen by the Living Wage Commission on behalf of the Living Wage Foundation. The rate for the UK Living Wage for 2020-21 is £9.90. The rate for the … Continued READ MORE
Ventures· Low pay· Pay Workertech and low pay An overview of research on low-paid workers in the UK 19 July 2021 by Nye Cominetti and Louise Marston and Lalitha Try This paper summarises Resolution Foundation research on low-paid workers and their experiences of work and the labour market. These are the workers that we are trying to reach with Resolution Ventures and the Workertech Partnership. READ MORE
Labour Market Outlook· Pay Labour Market Outlook Q2 2021 Q2 2021 14 June 2021 by Hannah Slaughter As Covid-19 restrictions begin to ease and more sectors begin to reopen, there are positive signs of recovery in the labour market. The number of payrolled employees has begun to increase (although it is still 700,000 lower than it was in early 2020); furlough rates are falling; and vacancies have recovered to pre-crisis levels. Despite … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Low pay· Pay Low Pay Britain 2021 7 June 2021 by Nye Cominetti and Charlie McCurdy and Hannah Slaughter This year’s Low Pay Britain report looks at the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on those on low pay and what that might mean for such workers as the economy starts to recover. Workers in lower paid jobs have faced greater health and economic risks than high paid workers; central to whether this is a … Continued READ MORE
Labour Market Outlook· Pay Earnings Outlook Q1 2021 Earnings in the Covid-19 crisis 22 March 2021 by Hannah Slaughter The UK has spent the first quarter of 2021 under renewed restrictions to slow the spread of Covid-19. As the third England-wide lockdown began in January, many businesses were forced to close once again, and the number of jobs furloughed through the Job Retention Scheme (JRS) rose to 4.8 million. There is growing light at … Continued READ MORE
Labour Market Outlook· Pay Earnings Outlook Q4 2020 Public sector pay 21 December 2020 by Hannah Slaughter As we come to the end of a year like no other, the outlook for the labour market remains mixed. At the beginning of this month, the second national lockdown came to an end, non-essential retail and hospitality businesses (in most of the country) were allowed to reopen, and recent weeks have brought official approval … Continued READ MORE
Pay· Living Wage Calculating the Real Living Wage for London and the Rest of the UK 2020-21 9 November 2020 by Nye Cominetti This report sets out the method through which the Living Wage rates in London and the rest of the UK are calculated by the Resolution Foundation and overseen by the Living Wage Commission on behalf of the Living Wage Foundation. The rate for the UK Living Wage for 2020-21 is £9.50. The rate for the … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Labour Market Outlook· Pay Earnings Outlook Q1 2020 What we know about how employee earnings have fared in the current crisis 16 July 2020 by Nye Cominetti and Laura Gardiner Since we last produced an Earnings Outlook (at the end of March) some things have become clearer. The scale of the impact of the current crisis is as big as was feared. This was already apparent then from the soaring claims for Universal Credit, but has since been confirmed by the 300-year-record fall in GDP, … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Low pay· Pay What happens after the clapping finishes? The pay, terms and conditions we choose for our care workers 19 April 2020 by Nye Cominetti and Laura Gardiner and Gavin Kelly The nation has rightly come together in the current crisis to express support for our care workers. But how do we normally treat the social care workforce? Due to both long-standing and nearer-term decisions and trends, frontline care workers are: underpaid, with around half earning less than the real Living Wage; particularly vulnerable to being … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Labour market· Low pay· Pay· Skills· Migration Crystal balls vs rear-view mirrors The UK labour market after coronavirus 7 April 2020 by Hannah Slaughter and Torsten Bell Summary Sudden and significant hits to the UK labour market in recent weeks have shown that this will be a jobs recession. The focus has rightly been on how to respond to the huge numbers of people losing work, but policy makers and pundits are also beginning to ask what this crisis could mean for … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Labour Market Outlook· Labour market· Pay Earnings Outlook Q4 2019 How should minimum wage policy respond to the current economic crisis? 28 March 2020 by Nye Cominetti and Karl Handscomb Usually in the Earnings Outlook we summarise the latest developments in pay and employment and use these to look forwards, with the trends moving slowly enough that the lag in our data is not too much of a problem. But with so much having changed so quickly, our normal indicators now serve as a guide … Continued READ MORE
Low pay· Labour market· Pay Working hard(ship) An exploration of poverty, work and tenure 4 February 2020 by Lindsay Judge and Hannah Slaughter This report explores the nexus between poverty, work and housing, and adds to our knowledge of the topic in two distinctive ways. First, we look at in-work poverty not just as a static but also a dynamic condition. Second, we explore the intersection between housing tenure and in-work poverty. READ MORE
Productivity & industrial strategy· Pay· Economic growth Dead-end relationship? Exploring the link between productivity and workers’ living standards 16 January 2020 by Matthew Whittaker Summary The strength of the relationship between productivity growth and median pay growth – and what it means for the way in which the gains from economic growth are shared across the workforce – has been questioned in recent years, with evidence of a ‘decoupling’ of the two across a number of advanced economies. Such … Continued READ MORE
Labour Market Outlook· Labour market· Pay Earnings Outlook Q3 2019 27 December 2019 by Nye Cominetti and Jack Leslie Unlike our politics, 2019 was a year of strength and stability in the labour market – a year when employment reached and stayed at record highs and pay growth neared pre-recession levels. The most recent set of labour market data (for the three months to October) underlined this – the 16-64 employment rate ticked up … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Low pay· Pay· Living Wage Ain’t no minimum high enough Minimum wage policy in the 2019 General Election 18 November 2019 by Nye Cominetti Summary Minimum wage increases since 2015 delivered a £3bn pay boost to low-paid workers last year – highlighting the benefits of cross-party consensus over a more ambitious wage floor. Both main parties are right to propose plans for an even higher wage floor, but should proceed carefully, and be prepared to change course if needed. … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay More than we bargain for Learning from new debates on how institutions can improve worker pay and security in Anglo-Saxon economies 15 November 2019 by Daniel Tomlinson The UK’s tight labour market is delivering improvements for many, but big challenges remain that current policies and debates aren’t yet rising to meet. The UK can learn from emerging discussions and policy innovations in other Anglo-Saxon economies. READ MORE
Incomes· Labour market· Low pay· Pay Feel poor, work more Explaining the UK’s record employment 12 November 2019 by Torsten Bell and Laura Gardiner There is no bigger change to our economy over the past decade than the employment boom. We argue that this has been driven by the deep post-crisis income squeeze. This pushed up labour supply via more workers, and a pause in the long-term decline in working hours. READ MORE
Pay· Living Wage Calculating a Living Wage for London and the rest of the UK 2019-20 11 November 2019 by Nye Cominetti This report sets out the method through which the Living Wage rates in London and the rest of the UK are calculated by the Resolution Foundation on behalf of the Living Wage Foundation. READ MORE
Labour Market Outlook· Labour market· Low pay· Pay The Resolution Foundation Earnings Outlook Q2 2019 7 November 2019 by Nye Cominetti and Jack Leslie In our Earnings Outlook for 2019 Q2 we suggest that the UK’s 12 year long pay squeeze may be about to come to an end, just in time for the election. But for many groups, typical pay is still well below its previous peak, READ MORE
