The future UK labour market
What are the links between people's skills, the labour market and household income in the UK?
Contacts
How policy strategies on skills and jobs could reduce future poverty and inequality in the UK.
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 commissioned the first project in this programme: "Examining the relationships between skills, the labour market and poverty and inequality". It will establish how these are linked and carry out projections of how changes in skills would affect poverty and inequality. The study is being conducted by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.
We have now commissioned the second project, 'An international review of skills, jobs and poverty: how lessons might be applied in the UK'. This will be published early in 2012. Thirdly, we have commissioned new work on "A forecast of future poverty, inequality and worklessness in 2020", which will be published in Spring 2012.
Key links
- UK Commission for Employment and Skills
- Low Pay Commission
- The TUC
- Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
- Working Futures 2007-2017
Other info
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