Roll up, roll up, get your labour market key stats here.
Slow wage growth is leading the headlines today, but there's nothing new really in the latest labour markets release, so we've done a bit of a deeper dive into youth (un)employment.
A boring set of labour market stats means we’re going to need to try and liven up our briefing through force of personality.
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1. Fairly flat set of labour market stats today. Some further easing, including in earnings growth, but any falls seem much smaller than pre-Christmas data. This leaves underlying challenges, like needing another 2m people in work to hit Govt 80% employment rate target. And economic risks ahead.
The Chancellor struck a positive note overall on employment prospects in her statement, but worth noting that the latest OBR forecast puts the 2026 unemployment rate peak at 0.33 ppts higher than their November forecast.
So basically this thread is a bit of 🤷♀️ (which, again, is what we were all sort of hoping for) but a watch this space.
We have proposed an elegant solution: a 'flex and match' approach that would tie employers' levy flexibilities to the number of young apprentices they support. But the ship on implementing that has sailed (for now).
learningandwork.org.uk/flex-and-mat...
But this is flexibility designed to support incumbent staff to upskill, not new entrants. Even if the Gvt is softening its ambitions on levy flexibility in order to prioritise young people, its not clear what could be announced here.
The Chancellor also noted large falls in apprenticeship starts for young people over the last decade.
There is a bit more to be announced on Growth and Skills levy - specifically on which short 'apprenticeship units' will initially be funded by it.
Worth noting that the recent NEET statistics painted a particularly dire picture for 21-24s (who have the highest NEET rates) - a group largely excluded from the Youth Guarantee in its current form. An expansion here would be welcome, but I've not heard anything on this.
No policy announcements today - but Reeves said there is more to be announced on Youth unemployment, which is clearly truly worrying this Gvt (more so than overall ⬆️ of unemployment rate, which OBR thinks will peak this year).
We have had a lot already announced - so what else might be coming?
📉🤯📉 Should we be panicking about the labour market? I have commandeered the L&W monthly briefing + our expert team to help me think this question through. 🤯📉🤯
You can read the whole thing here - but here are some headline thoughts...
learningandwork.org.uk/labour-marke...
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Is this a crisis? No. But it's not a good look for a Government that has pledged (aspired? declared an ambition?) to reach an 80% employment rate.
As m'learned boss pointed out this morning, since Labour came into power the employment rate is...unchanged.
bsky.app/profile/step...
Slowing wage growth in the private sector is another sign of a cooling labour market.
I'll let others tell you what that means for interest rates - my point is that the slowing of both hiring and pay increases do not suggest that the UK will be awash with opportunity for job seekers any time soon.
This is all particularly bad news for young people: retail and hospitality are traditional entry points into the world of work, and hiring slowdowns hit hardest those who have not yet got their first job to move on from.
Unsurprising that NEET levels remain at 1.26 million
Before you start attributing this to AI, note that the biggest drops in employees has been in retail and hospitality - sectors with 122,000 fewer workers than this time last year.
(we are kicking off a project on AI workforce impacts though, so watch this space...)
Unemployment is up nearly a full percentage point since this time last year. What's going on?
⚫vacancy levels have stalled (although they're no longer ⬇️) but the number of people wanting a job is up (now 5.4 for every vacancy)
⚫job-to-job moves are on a downward trend
This is a hiring slowdown
📉🤯📉 Should we be panicking about the labour market? I have commandeered the L&W monthly briefing + our expert team to help me think this question through. 🤯📉🤯
You can read the whole thing here - but here are some headline thoughts...
learningandwork.org.uk/labour-marke...
"Overall, employment is falling, unemployment rising and vacancies flat."
💬 L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social responds to the labour market statistics released by ONS today.
Introduce yourself with the name your parents almost gave you
Daisy, after a beloved great-aunt. They worried I would be mocked for having a girly/old fashioned name.
So they lumbered me with the name of half the millennial women I meet.
'Emily Andrews' is so common, my hairdresser sees two of us
"Looking ahead, slow growth and global instability increase the risks of rising worklessness, increasing the importance of the Government focusing on growth."
✍️ L&W chief exec @stephenevans.bsky.social responds to today's labour market statistics released by ONS.
"Occupational standards can be the foundation of a smarter, more responsive skills system. But only if we’re willing to rethink how they work—and who they’re really for."
Read L&W's @stephenevans.bsky.social and Pearson's Donna Ford-Clarke's article on occupational standards in England. ⬇️📝
"We need a twin approach of providing more help to find work and creating the conditions for employers to create jobs."
✍️ L&W Chief Executive @stephenevans.bsky.social responds to the labour market statistics released by ONS today.
Some worry signs in the labour market. Payroll jobs & employment heading down, with relatively large falls for retail & hospitality. Unemployment at its highest since the pandemic, partly reflecting more people looking for work (inactivity down) but suggesting they're struggling to find jobs.
Great write-up of our "No train, no gain" report.
Training pushes up those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder further and faster than anyone else. But investment - from Gvt and employers - are way down.
"Barmy at the best of times" indeed. www.ft.com/content/460b...
"With four out of five of the workers of 2035 already in the workplace today, we cannot rely on schools, colleges and universities to provide the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons of the Brave New World we are entering in this latest technological shift."
www.ft.com/content/460b...
I missed the leak when I went to get a sandwich. Does this mean I still have to watch the speech?
The way that peri/menopause is getting talked about in some places is way too normative ('menopause is like this and impacts people this way') and scarily blasé about the pitfalls of 'biology as destiny'.
We all have hormones that impact us in different ways at different times.
That extends not just to the most mercenary policy impact - I felt like my training also made it harder for me to see a way to 'political' change in a grander sense.
My PhD gave me an arsenal of tools of political critique, but none for political action. It took a while to untangle that confusion.
This sums up the fundamental tension in the "impact" agenda for me.
The route to policy impact is to accept the premise of what policy-makers want to achieve, and help them achieve it.
My whole academic training taught me to question/disrupt/reject policy-makers' premises.