Living standards· Political parties and elections Living standards in the downturn and recovery: the backdrop to the election 12 March 2015 by Matthew Whittaker After six long years, average pay is rising. The gains are currently modest, but momentum is expected to build in the coming months (thanks in no small part to falling inflation). And there’s evidence that household incomes have started to recover too. The best data on this is significantly out of date but, buoyed by … Continued READ MORE
Labour market Are zero-hours contracts here to stay? 25 February 2015 by Conor D’Arcy In many ways, the growth of zero-hours contracts (ZHCs) has symbolised the UK’s labour market since the downturn began: contributing to both stronger than expected employment figures but also rising job insecurity. One of the big question marks though has been whether they are solely a symptom of the recession and would start to disappear … Continued READ MORE
Pay A £6.70 minimum wage – how ambitious a rise is it? 24 February 2015 by Conor D’Arcy The Low Pay Commission, the body tasked with advising the government on the national minimum wage’s (NMW) annual increase, has recommended it rise by just over 3 per cent, from £6.50 to £6.70, from October 2015. The second in its “new phase” of above-inflation rises after years of falling in real terms, any real increase … Continued READ MORE
Pay Boom time for wages? How realistic is a doubling of wage growth by the end of the year 17 February 2015 by Matthew Whittaker Last week’s Bank of England Inflation Report raised the prospect of a boom time for wages in the coming year. By the end of 2015, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) projects that average weekly earnings will be growing at an annual rate of 3½ per cent, up from a forecast of 3¼ per cent back … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Public spending· Scotland The SNP and austerity: how different are they to the other parties? 13 February 2015 by Gavin Kelly and Adam Corlett Nicola Sturgeon gave a widely trailed speech in London earlier this week majoring on the SNP’s opposition to what she said was a ‘cosy consensus’ in Westminster on austerity. In providing a few new bits of information on the SNP’s view on public spending it helped fit another piece in the jigsaw that is the … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay How the exclusion of the self-employed might obscure the 2015 earnings recovery 21 January 2015 by Laura Gardiner Over the past few years growth in self-employment has been a big story – the self-employed account for two thirds of the net change in employment since the pre-recession peak. But this may now be turning a corner; self-employment peaked back in June and has fallen steadily by 79,000 over the last two quarters, while … Continued READ MORE
Social care· Low pay· Pay· Living Wage Better pay for care workers: up-front costs but long-term gains 20 January 2015 by Laura Gardiner There is growing realisation that the race to the bottom in working conditions is becoming a barrier to quality in social care. Low pay, at times below the minimum wage, and unenviable terms are unlikely to deliver the sustainable long-term care system that our ageing society requires. While many accept this, so far we have … Continued READ MORE
Economy and public finances· Political parties and elections 2015 election – the next big ballot box surprise? 13 January 2015 by Gavin Kelly Welcome back to 1974. A tight spring election fails to produce a majority for either of the main parties, so the prime minster of the new minority government calls a second poll in the autumn in pursuit of a clear mandate. Predictions for 2015 are, of course, foolhardy. A small majority for either of the main … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances The high road or the low road? What a balanced current budget by 2017-18 does and does not mean 12 January 2015 by Adam Corlett and Matthew Whittaker Taken at face value a new Charter for Budget Responsibility, with a goal of eliminating the structural current deficit by 2017-18, has potentially significant implications for the parties’ fiscal plans. This applies most to Labour – given their separate pledge to do this by 2019-20 – and to a significant extent for the Liberal Democrats. … Continued READ MORE
Living standards 2015: The outlook for living standards – sunshine and clouds ahead 28 December 2014 by Gavin Kelly The economic recovery gained momentum in 2014, though it failed to feed through into raised living standards as much as many hoped. There are reasons for being fairly optimistic that this could start to change next year. Underpinned by the buoyant jobs market we expect household disposable incomes – the best measure of living standards … Continued READ MORE
Incomes· Living standards· Labour market What’s in store for household incomes in 2015? 27 December 2014 by Matthew Whittaker The 2015 election has been billed by many as the ‘living standards election’, meaning that we can expect much debate in the coming months on just how households are faring and whether economic growth is translating into income growth. To date though, most attention has focused on wages instead of incomes. The six-year real-terms pay … Continued READ MORE
Pay Could we be set for two decades of lost pay growth? 12 December 2014 by Matthew Whittaker Rarely have questions of household living standards and the shape of the public finances been so interwoven. The Autumn Statement – or, more specifically, the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook – identified a £25bn shortfall in tax revenues by 2018-19 relative to the projections in place at the time of Budget 2014. This is a … Continued READ MORE
Housing Households have been coping remarkably well with high housing costs, but interest rate rises lurk just around the corner 10 December 2014 by Laura Gardiner 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 READ MORE
Public spending· Economy and public finances· Political parties and elections Assessing the post-election implications of the parties’ different fiscal stances 5 December 2014 by Matthew Whittaker Our recent briefing note In The Balance set out some indicative figures for public finances in the next parliament based on our interpretation of each of the three main parties’ highly sketchy (to date) outlines of their preferred trajectories. This note updates this work based on the new OBR figures released alongside the Autumn Statement. … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances The drama of the Commons took a back-seat to the economic musings of the OBR today 3 December 2014 by Matthew Whittaker Unusually for a fiscal event so close to an election, today’s Autumn Statement was never expected to be about giveaways and grand schemes. Indeed, the politics in the Commons took a back-seat to the economic musings of the OBR. The two key questions we wanted answered? First, how would the outlook for public finances – … Continued READ MORE
Budgets & fiscal events· Public spending· Economy and public finances Will the Chancellor still be aiming for an overall budget surplus in 2018/19 after the Autumn Statement? 2 December 2014 by Adam Corlett In tomorrow’s Autumn Statement, the Chancellor is expected to announce an updated Charter for Budget Responsibility, which would formally commit the government to a balanced cyclically-adjusted current budget by 2017-18. By forcing a vote in parliament, the Chancellor is thought to be drawing Labour out on their potentially looser fiscal policy. Yet this move also … Continued READ MORE
Welfare The challenges facing Universal Credit go far wider than its IT system 27 November 2014 by David Finch The program to deliver Universal Credit (UC) has already been reset by the Major Projects Authority, and now the National Audit Office has raised further doubts about whether UC will be successfully implemented at all. Their report tells us that the new digital service been delayed by six months due to a lack of staff … Continued READ MORE
Pay A reality check on hopes that Britain’s pay squeeze has ended 19 November 2014 by Matthew Whittaker Last week’s data on average weekly earnings (AWE) showed that annual pay growth in September had overtaken CPI inflation for the first time since 2009, sparking cautious (and not-so-cautious) proclamations that the six-year squeeze on earnings might finally have come to an end. Today comes a sobering reality check. According to the ONS’ Annual Survey … Continued READ MORE
Low pay· Pay We need strategies to boost pay progression for the low paid 19 November 2014 by Conor D’Arcy “There’s only one person there who’s gone from the bottom to the top, out of hundreds. If I’m starting at the bottom, and I only know one person that’s gone all the way, I don’t think I’m going to be able to do that.” That was the view of an employee of a large supermarket. … Continued READ MORE
Pay Are earnings going to rise by more than 3 per cent next year? 12 November 2014 by Laura Gardiner Another BoE inflation report, another set of rosy forecasts for earnings next year. Just as 2014 was supposed to be the year of the pay rise, now it seems 2015 will be the year when things turn positive. And, according to the Bank, wages won’t just creep into positive territory next year, they are going … Continued READ MORE
Living standards· Social mobility Stuck or just passing through: how can policy-makers improve social mobility? 11 November 2014 by Gavin Kelly One of the recurring fixtures of British political life is a bout of soul-searching about social mobility. Depending on the point of view of the pundit, this tends to involve a nostalgic backward glance to an era when things were supposedly better (cue unevidenced claims about the mobility-boosting virtues of grammar schools) or, less commonly, … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Pay How the changing shape of the UK workforce has started to drag down wages 10 November 2014 by Laura Gardiner It’s clichéd to say that the most certainty you can take from any economist’s prediction is that it will be mistaken, but many got their forecasts for 2014 horribly wrong. At the beginning of this year, commentators were fairly united in hailing the ‘year of the pay rise’, with most expecting the UK’s enduring real … Continued READ MORE
Pay Why hasn’t 2014 been the year of the pay rise? 7 November 2014 by Gavin Kelly Next month we will be treated to the familiar spate of end of year reviews. Amid all that copy we can expect a regular theme to be that this was (another) year in which all the forecasts of a rise in earnings for workers were proved wrong. Inaccurate economic forecasts, especially when it comes to … Continued READ MORE
Low pay· Pay The prevalence of low pay in Britain remains stubbornly high 3 November 2014 by Adam Corlett More than one in five employees in Britain are low paid, according to this year’s Low Pay Britain report. This latest figure is a small increase, reversing a welcome fall the year before. But the bigger picture is that the rate of low pay in Britain has barely changed over the past 20 years. Beneath … Continued READ MORE
Labour market· Cities and regions Break even moment for employment masks regional imbalance 15 October 2014 by Laura Gardiner Today’s employment statistics mark an important point on the long road to recovery from the historically deep downturn we have suffered. After over six years, the working age employment rate has returned to its pre-recession level of 73.0 per cent (though it is still below the February 2005 peak of 73.2 per cent). We have … Continued READ MORE
