A normal and sensible way to run benefits policy! So many examples of this in taxes and benefits (e.g. triple lock) where we seem unable to have principled arguments about the right level of things, so we just pursue weird uprating until people get unhappy / spending pressure grows
East to west on the Thames clipper has to be one of the better £6 you can spend in London
Don't you need more than a thousand years of tradition for it to come from the bible anyway?
I don't watch golf, I just watched a golf video. Does this situation not ever lead to golf ball -> head problems?
Would 100% do this but no under 6s 😢
My hot take is it would have been better if we'd won this game
Fair enough! And obviously, one a week could justify top £ if they're good
Do you get a full time salary for one column a week?
Today the Fair Work Agency was launched, bringing enforcement of several employment rights under one roof. This is a really welcome move, but its impact will depend on its resources and powers. A thread summarising the latest RF Labour Market Outlook: 🧵 www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...
Hard to draw conclusions from 2025 about the (adult) min wage imo. Hiring slowdown + wage compression discourse convinced ppl min wage is too high, but I think the combo with NICs hike was just completely mad & unusual. In any case, policy is already cautious, has been 'hold steady' for a few years
This is useful, thanks ! We're pretty new to this ..
Purfing is eluding me.. Stonkenstrayting and skoleraytes are great
Haha that's great. One from my own childhood was cardiganon, from go and get your cardigan on
A fun thing about kids learning to speak is when they don't know where words start and end. My son thinks the word is "helpme". As in, can you help me? Yes I can helpme
Baumol as a verb 😹
Definitely but the divergence still exists if you look at the group actually not working (on stat xplore). Sorry not to put a chart up
.. has come among groups who aren't claiming benefits - and that's consistent with the age pattern. But still something we'd like to understand better.
Another puzzle (no chart, sorry) is that unemployment has risen considerably over the past 18 months, but there hasn't been an increase in the claimant count. Either that means LFS is wrong, or there has been a divergence. The latter would have to be because the recent increase in unemployment ..
On the surface level, this looks like a labour market specfic shock (employer NICs..) playing out. But it raises the question of how firms are producing the same with fewer workers. Michael Saunders had a good article arguing this is giving us 'bad' productivity growth.
Finally, wanted to mention a couple of labour market 'puzzles', or things we're thinking about. One is that the labour market did quite a bit worse than wider economy last year, which isn't unprecedented but not what you'd expect. See this FUN Okun chart.
The less good news is that after factoring in inflation, wages only grew by 0.4% in real terms over the year to January. Given that the war in the Middle East is likely to push up inflation, decent real wage growth over the course of this year is looking a lot less likely.
On pay, nominal growth has continued to fall. Average wages rose by 3.8% in the year to January across the economy as a whole, and 3.3% in the private sector – rates that are consistent with the Bank of England’s inflation target.
The less rosy part of this picture was the youth labour market, where youth unemployment rose again, as did the share not in full-time education or employment (a similar measure to the headline NEET rate). Unemployment rose for all age groups under 35, but fell (slightly) for age groups over 35.
This means our alternative employment rate – using tax & population data – has also inched up, breaking a trend of 2+ years of falls. [NB we paused these estimates last month – now resumed! Will update the web page later today. These are still a better guide to the employment trend than the LFS 😜]
The other good news was in the payroll jobs data, which showed an increase for the third month in a row. A three-month run of positive payroll jobs changes hasn’t happened since Spring 2024.
The expectation was that unemployment would inch up again, and it didn’t need to rise much to reach the pandemic high point of 5.3%. Instead, it held steady at 5.2% in the headline 3-month series. This was thanks to a surprise drop in the January number (to 4.9%, from 5.4% in Dec).
Today’s labour market stats were better than expected – headline unemployment didn’t rise thanks to a surprise Jan single month number, and payrolled jobs rose. Real wages are still growing (slowly), but war in the middle east clouds the outlook there. Thread from me and @hannahslaughter.bsky.social
55-65% is quite a big (~£2) range, but agree with the need for some flexibility, especially once you've reached a higher level. Now that the targeting phase has done its job maybe even a case for just reverting to the pre-Osborne approach of asking LPC to raise if economic conditions allow
If real wages were expected to fall, and NLW rose in line with inflation not wages, that would imply the NLW rising above above the 2/3 median wages benchmark, and honestly I'm not sure what happens after that (i.e. does it then fall back to 2/3?). But that's a question for the 2027 remit 😀
earnings are expected to grow in real terms, that doesn't bind. But given what's currently happening to oil prices, it's possible that is the relevant bit of the remit. Will have to see what the inflation and earnings forecasts look like in a few months' time.