The Paula Principle

Resolution Foundation

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More

Productivity and the PP

Last month, global leaders from governments, private sector companies, trade unions and civil society pledged to take concrete action towards closing the gender pay gap by 2030. The global commitments – to ensure women in every sector of the workforce are paid equally to men for doing work of equal value – were made at the Equal Pay International Coalition (EPIC) Pledging event held during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. As part of the rationale for the initiative, Secretary-General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, said, “Gender pay gaps are not only unfair for those who suffer them, but they are also detrimental to our economies. If you do not have…
Read More

Social mobility

Some familiar issues but also some progress over the last decade - these are the headlines from a useful new report by the Resolution Foundation for the Social Mobility Commission. The report looks at low pay over the last decade and beyond, dividing people into 3 main groups: the stuck (who have stayed throughout in low pay, i.e. below 2/3 of the median wage); cyclers, who have moved in and out of low pay;  and escapers, who have moved out of low pay and stayed there for at least the last 3 years. Stuck is obviously where you don't want to be.  The good news is that the proportion of…
Read More

Progression and quality of work

The week got off to a brisk start with a Resolution Foundation/CBI conference on the future of the labour market.  Three panel sessions, packed with a mix of analysis and practitioner input (how I wish that academics would learn from think tanks about how to get information across effectively...). A central theme was about the quality of work.  Partly this was because Matthew Taylor was one of the contributors.  Extensively trailing his forthcoming report on the gig economy, he told us that the primary focus will be on this theme of the quality of work, recognising that measuring quality is much more difficult and contentious than measuring quantity.  So although…
Read More

Graduates and non-graduates: RF & HEPI

Two reports have come out in the last few days which complement each other well. The first is from the Resolution Foundation, and focuses on the much-neglected group of people who have some qualifications but are not graduates.  This is the RF exactly fulfilling its remit of shedding light on what is happening to the middle segments of our society - squeezed or not.   Given the number of people who hold vocational qualifications, and the number of times we hear about the UK's lack of intermediate skills, it's absurd that we pay so little attention to them. The report produces quite a neat typology of non-graduates:  from 'ladder climbers'…
Read More

Pay gaps, at both ends of the scale. And OECD on an overblown finance sector.

Two heavy-duty reports came out recently,  both relevant to the PP though from very different angles. First a commission set up by the Resolution Foundation to look at the attempts to introduce Universal Credit produced its final report, Making the most of UC.  Mainly this grapples with the incredibly complex issues posed by the attempt to simplify the benefits system through Universal Credit.  I'd blow several gaskets if I even attempted to summarise it here, but one of the central issues is how to enable people work at lower levels to earn more, and to keep more of their earnings.   The current system often traps people in low-earning jobs,…
Read More

Paying more

Some kind of prize to the Resolution Foundation for the cover of their recent report on how to boost low wages;  I say that even though the boosted person looks very male to me, so maybe doesn't fit best with the Paula Principle.  In fact as Susan Harkness' piece on women's wages makes clear, women's wages have dropped by less than men's, thus closing the gender gap but in a way that doesn't exactly call for hurrahs. Harkness argues that this convergence is partly due to the fact that it's more the male-dominated employment sectors that have borne the brunt of the recession and subsequent wage squeeze.  She also points our,…
Read More

Valuing care

There are about 2 million people employed in the care sector in the UK.   1.4 million are in the 'frontline' , which means they do the physical caring,      but also often are one of the few social contacts that the client has, especially in the case of elderly clients.   Most of these are women.  It's a demanding job that many of us would be completely unable to sustain.  It's also one where low pay is very widespread.  This is criminal - often literally so, as many are paid below the National Minimum Wage. A recent report from the ever-relevant Resolution Foundation, aptly titled 'As If we Cared', tackles…
Read More

Pensions and skills

Pensions don't grab everyone.  When I was a youngish researcher, about 35 years ago, I did a study of employee trustees of pension schemes, and how much influence they had on the way the schemes were managed.  I got quite into this, since it seemed (and seems) to me really interesting that there were employees formally involved in the management of huge sums of capital (even then, in the early 1980s, the funds were worth many billions).  "Pension fund socialism' was a prospect raised by the management guru of the time, Peter Drucker.  In fact I got so into the topic that my friends used to make 'switch-it-off' gestures; years…
Read More

Self-employment: another area we need to understand

I've just been to a stimulating meeting at the Resolution Foundation, which always provides food for thought on employment issues.  This one was on self-employment, which now counts for over 15% of the workforce - some 4.5 million people. As Gavin Kelly, the FR's CEO, observed, when you have numbers of that kind routinely left out of most labour market analysis, it makes one query how robust the conclusions can be. Add to that the absurdity of using 16-64 as the age frame; and then pile on the limitations of the simplistic binary division between full-timers and part-timers and you reality begin to think that we need a radical rebuild…
Read More

Whose flexibility?

I went recently to the launch of a Resolution Foundation report on zero hours contracts (ZHCs).  My daughter was on one of these for quite a while.  I think of a 'contract' as something struck between two or more agents with some degree of reciprocal obligation towards each other, however minimal and formal.  ZHCs don't look much like  that to me.  They vary, of course, but typically they involve the individual being at the organisation's disposal, at almost any time, with no reciprocity. The RF report, and other research by Jill Rubery focussing on domiciliary care workers, shows just how unbalanced the deal often is:  work which is very intermittent, so that…
Read More