Analysis and action on living standards
Jobs, Skills and Pay
In the three months to January 2019, average nominal pay growth was 3.4 per cent, where it had been for the last three months. However, with inflation falling below its 2 per cent target, real pay growth strengthened to 1.4 per cent, the highest since June 2016. Improving pay growth is being driven by a … Continued
Incomes and Inequality
In 2017, Members of the Scottish Parliament unanimously voted the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 into law, creating targets for the reduction of child poverty. This followed the UK government’s abandoning of its 2020 targets, and marked a welcome attempt to ensure that poverty reduction remained a policy priority north of the border. But agreeing … Continued
Jobs, Skills and Pay
This paper uses the Brexit moment to take stock of where Britain has got to on educational attainment, and where we might be heading. It 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 … Continued
Public Finances and the Economy
The 2019 Spring Statement provided little in the way of answers. We had new OBR forecasts, with yet another fiscal windfall for the Exchequer – but the fact that they were predicated on an increasingly questionable assumption of an orderly Brexit on 29 March meant they were at risk of being out of date before … Continued
Jobs, Skills and Pay
In this report, commissioned by Greater Manchester Combined Authority as part of Greater Manchester’s Independent Prosperity Review, we provide an in-depth look at low pay in Greater Manchester (GM). We explore who is in GM’s low-paid workforce, the jobs they work in, their routes out of low pay, the dynamism of the local labour market … Continued
Public Finances and the Economy
Ahead of Budgets and Spring Statements, speculation usually revolves around what the forecast will say and what the Chancellor will do. But, as with so much in UK politics in 2019, next week’s version feels different. We might expect little change in the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR’s) economic and fiscal projections: yes the economy … Continued