The future UK labour market

Introduction

The nature of the UK labour market is a major barrier to further progress on poverty. Policy would benefit from understanding more about how skills and poverty are or can be linked in practice. This programme, in partnership with the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, aims to understand these links in order to develop coherent strategies to minimise future poverty and inequality in the UK.

Key issues

Relatively high concentrations of low-paid, low-skilled and insecure jobs, offering little hope for individual progression, hamper attempts to reduce poverty through strategies that rely on paid employment as the 'best route out'. This problem is further shown by the growth in levels of in-work poverty in recent years.

Forthcoming work

We have published the report on Poverty and Inequality in 2020: Implications of Changes in the Structure of Employment by the University of Warwick and the Institute for Fiscal Studies. This shows that that changes in the labour market, combined with changes to the tax and benefit system, over the next decade are likely to increase relative poverty rates across the UK. Two further projects will be published in June on "Examining the relationships between skills, the labour market and poverty and inequality" by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex and “An international review of skills, jobs and poverty: how lessons might be applied in the UK” by Frontier Economics. A fourth and final phase, looking at policy and practice solutions to poverty through employment and skills, will begin over the summer.

Key links

• UK Commission for Employment and Skills
• Low Pay Commission
• The TUC
• Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
• Working Futures 2010 - 2020

Other info

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