The self-employed are being hit particularly hard by the Covid-19 crisis. Many have been offered a lifeline through the government’s Self-Employment Income Support Scheme – but does it go far enough? The self-employed have experienced widespread income losses during the crisis. This has caused financial distress, exacerbated by uncertainty over future business prospects. There is […]
Category: Jobs, work, pay & benefits
Young people suffer negative consequences from recessions – and we expect their experience of the Covid-19 crisis to be no different. The government has a toolkit of policies to protect them from long-lasting ‘scarring’ effects: which measures are most likely to succeed? Although the hospitalisation and mortality rates of young people (aged 16-24) from Covid-19 […]
Maintaining or restoring the mental health of the working age population during the Covid-19 crisis will not only have direct benefits for those affected. It will also have positive side effects for the performance of the UK’s labour market – and ultimately for national wealth. In any year, the economic cost of mental ill health […]
The self-employed have been hit particularly hard by the recession. Government support has been generous for many, but others have fallen through the cracks. Looking ahead, there are signs that self-employment is starting to undergo significant changes. The growth of self-employment has been one of the key features of the UK’s labour market for the […]
The Supreme Court has ruled that the tens of thousands of Uber drivers in the UK should be treated as workers rather than as being self-employed. The decision may force the company and other platform-based services to make big changes in how they operate. On 19 February 2021, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that Uber […]
Modest rises in minimum wage rates came into effect in the UK on 1 April 2021. Although rates have been uprated year-on-year since 1999, with little evidence of negative employment effects, the Covid-19 crisis makes the impact of these increases on jobs and pay highly uncertain. On 1 April 2021, the rates of the UK’s […]
Many people are expected to lose their jobs in the aftermath of the pandemic. Retraining will be one important way to get them back into work. There is a good economic case both for subsidising individuals and giving firms incentives to invest in training programmes. The need to increase people’s skills, often through retraining, comes […]
As the economy restarts after the coronavirus crisis, workers that became unemployed eventually find new jobs. But initially these are often not the ‘right’ jobs – they are not good matches between employees’ skills and employers’ needs. What can policy do to improve workforce reallocation? The Covid-19 crisis has led to a lot of people […]
Covid-19 has had uneven effects on people’s health, finances and jobs. There is wide variation in the impact on earnings across the economy, particularly between the public and private sectors. Sectors with high shares of furloughed workers have experienced low wage growth. Average earnings across the economy fell by around 5% in the months following […]
Recessions have an impact on net migration flows, the labour market outcomes of migrants and the effects of migrants on native outcomes. Migrant workers face particular challenges in the Covid-19 crisis given the industries and occupations in which many of them are employed. Public concerns about immigration have played a major role in recent political […]