Labour market
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Pay

Snakes and Ladders

Lee Savage
Lee Savage

Snakes and Ladders investigates the factors which influence an individual’s chances of moving up the earnings ladder and finds that a person’s prospects for earnings mobility are influenced by their gender, whether they work part time, and where they live.

Key findings

  • Women fared significantly worse than men during both decades. Men were up to 50% more likely to move up the earnings scale, and women were also more likely to move down.
  • Part-time workers were up to 90% more likely to move down the scale than full-timers, and the part time penalty increased from the 1990s to the 2000s.
  • Those living outside London – in particular those in the North East, the North West, the East Midlands and the South West – were less likely to move up and more likely to move down the pay scale than those in London.

Further reading

A hard day’s night
The labour market experience of low-to-middle income families
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Nye Cominetti, Louise Murphy
Get Britain’s Stats Working
Exploring alternatives to Labour Force Survey estimates
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Adam Corlett
Calculating the Real Living Wage for London and the rest of the UK: 2024
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Nye Cominetti, Louise Murphy
Lee Savage
Lee Savage Former Research & Policy Analyst