Labour market· Skills· Wellbeing and mental health We’ve only just begun Action to improve young people’s mental health, education and employment 26 February 2024 by Charlie McCurdy and Louise Murphy The transition to adulthood is a tumultuous time: leaving education, entering the labour market, living independent of family and managing one’s finances all come with their stresses and strains. But this crucial part of the life course can be especially challenging for young people with mental health problems who are more likely to struggle in … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Skills· Wellbeing and mental health Left behind Exploring the prevalence of youth worklessness due to ill health in different parts of the UK 5 June 2023 by Louise Murphy This briefing note is part of the Health Foundation’s Young people’s future health inquiry, in which we focus on the prevalence of youth worklessness due to ill health in different parts of the UK. We find that young people in small towns or villages are more likely than young people in big cities to be out of work due to ill health. READ MORE
Economy 2030· Skills Train in Vain? Skills, tasks, and training in the UK labour market 5 December 2022 by Nye Cominetti and Rui Costa and Andrew Eyles and Kathleen Henehan and Sandra McNally Human capital and skills are important for improving the UK’s labour market and economic performance. This note assesses how the skills needed in the UK labour market have changed over past decades, and how well placed our system of training – and particularly on-the-job training – is to help us adapt to these changes. Some … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Labour market· Skills· Intergenerational Centre Leaving lockdown Young people’s employment in 2021: improvements and challenges in the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic 31 January 2022 by Louise Murphy This spotlight explores younger people’s employment trajectory during the Covid-19 pandemic, before setting out where policy makers should now be focused. READ MORE
Covid-19· Skills· Intergenerational Centre Uneven steps Changes in youth unemployment and study since the onset of Covid-19 14 April 2021 by Kathleen Henehan In order to reduce the spread of Covid-19, and thereby save lives, large sectors of the UK economy were temporarily shut down during parts of 2020 and 2021. Although unemployment rose by less than anticipated during this period, with the unemployment rate among people aged 16 and older rising by just over one percentage point … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Skills Can training help workers change their stripes? Retraining and career change in the UK 18 August 2020 by Kathleen Henehan The coronavirus crisis has already brought significant disruption to the UK labour market, particularly in sectors that offer in-person services like hospitality, entertainment and retail. There are fears that as the Government’s temporary support measures wind down, many more adults could soon be out of work. The Government will need to consider adult education and … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Skills· Intergenerational Centre Class of 2020 Education leavers in the current crisis 6 May 2020 by Kathleen Henehan The economic fallout from the coronavirus has taken the UK into uncharted territory, with fears that an additional 640,000 18-24-year-olds could find themselves unemployed this year alone. This briefing note focuses specifically on the prospects facing young people leaving full-time education today, highlighting the size and length of employment and pay scarring that they could … Continued READ MORE
Covid-19· Low pay· Labour market· Skills· Pay· 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
Labour market· Skills Trading up or trading off? Understanding recent changes to England’s apprenticeships system 24 August 2019 by Kathleen Henehan In 2017 there was overhaul to the apprenticeships system in England: large firms were required to pay 0.5 per cent of their wage bill into an apprenticeship levy, while regulations on training and delivery were firmed up. Two years on, this briefing note takes stock of the system, looking at what’s changed, why and where … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Skills Pick up the pace: the slowdown in educational attainment growth and its widespread effects 18 March 2019 by Kathleen Henehan This paper highlights that while improvements to the country’s human capital stock have been driven by increasingly educated cohorts of young people flowing into the labour market, the pace of growth in young people’s educational attainment has more than halved since the start of the 21st century. This ‘slowdown’ brings with it worrying implications for productivity and living standards. READ MORE
Labour market· Skills· Intergenerational Centre Technical Fault: Options for promoting human capital growth 27 April 2018 by Kathleen Henehan and Anna Vignoles This is the 20th paper for the Intergenerational Commission, focused on the pace of and inequality within education attainment. It proposes a ‘twin-track’ approach to reforming the skills landscape in order to restart generational progress on human capital: both ‘fixing’ the technical (non-A level/university) education offer for future generations of young people, and providing additional support for those lower-qualified young adults who have already left school. READ MORE
Labour market· Brexit & trade· Skills· Migration Work in Brexit Britain: reshaping the nation’s labour market 7 July 2017 Almost a year after voting to leave the European Union the negotiations for the UK’s departure began on 19th June 2017. Those negotiations and the exact nature of the agreements they lead to will dominate British politics and policy making for the years ahead, but making a success of Brexit Britain is about far more … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Skills Up to the job? Using the Apprenticeship Levy to tackle the UK’s post-16 education divide 4 April 2017 by Kathleen Henehan Over the past twenty years there has been a significant rise in educational attainment in Britain: while the proportion of young people with low-level qualifications halved between 1996 and 2016, the proportion of those with qualifications at degree level and above more than doubled. Homing in on different types of qualifications, we see that growth … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay· Skills· Intergenerational Centre Study, Work, Progress, Repeat? How and why pay and progression outcomes have differed across cohorts 23 February 2017 by Laura Gardiner and Paul Gregg This paper is the fifth report for the Intergenerational Commission, which was launched in the summer of 2016 to explore questions of intergenerational fairness that are currently rising up the agenda and make recommendations for repairing the intergenerational social contract. It attempts to understand the concerning finding that millennials who have entered work so far … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Low pay· Skills· Social mobility Finding your routes: non-graduate pathways in the UK’s labour market 11 May 2016 by Conor D’Arcy and David Finch This report, commissioned by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, explores how poor career routes are holding back the ‘forgotten forty per cent’ of the workforce – mid-skilled workers with at least five A*-C GCSEs but without a university education. READ MORE
