🎉 Congratulations to Department of Social Policy PhD alumnus tcstephens.bsky.social who has been awarded funding by the EU Commission under its Horizon Europe programme, for a 2.5-year Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.
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Our analysis suggests Govt's ambition to raise employment rates risks being undermined unless it shifts more fundamentally from the welfare system it inherited - which pushes people into "any job", without the personalised support to enable decent work and career progression.
Pleased to put out this new analysis with @maxmosley.bsky.social into the deeper barriers UK workers face in getting sustainable jobs, with genuine progression opportunities and proper in-work support - including first-ever data on the job quality of people on Universal Credit.👇
Text: Why pushing people into any job risks undermining the UK’s ambition for high employment. The government's current approach to conditionality may be pushing people into low-quality jobs and creating a cycle of insecurity
NEW: Our latest analysis suggests strict conditions faced by people in receipt of benefits are forcing them into low quality jobs.
This risks undermining the government's employment targets, as people forced into low-paid, insecure jobs are less likely to stay in work.
We're dominated by focus on compliance, processes and automation (often with bad data). For DWP, there's clear evidence this undermines delivery of more and better jobs:
neweconomics.org/2024/07/term...
We should learn from cases like this, and Carer's Allowance, to design a person-centred system.
Frustrated but hardly surprised by this growing build up of child benefit mishandling cases. They reflect systemic issues with the way our welfare services engage with claimants.
No prior engagement re issues. No chance to correct bad data. Just automatic suspension of payments (1/2)
We find this would be better at supporting working families to increase hrs, more progressive, & simpler - combining current complex mess of free hrs, Tax Free CC and UC into single offer. And - if parents increased working hrs/earnings - it'd have virtuous fiscal benefits vs. current system. [5/5]
We've looked at the effects of an alternative offer which combines universal and contributory elements:
- A core free 15hrs for all children;
- For working familes, a % cap on childcare spend above that.
To do this, we've built a detailed & dynamic childcare model using a large-scale survey. [4/]
Even for existing working families, the fully expanded free hours aren't enough to support full-time childcare.
It'll remain prohibitively expensive for low-to-middle income families - costing them 2.5-3.5 times more than a family on 90th earnings percentile (& way more for multi-child fams) [/3].
To realise economic benefits from childcare, you really need to support poorest families to access it - where social & labour market gains by far the highest.
Yet current system denies support to those very same families: the richest 8x more likely to benefit from expanded expanded free hours. [2/]
A pretty hefty piece of @neweconomics.bsky.social analysis out today by me & @pollardtom.bsky.social, in collaboration with @jrf-uk.bsky.social, on the problems with free hours-based childcare system Labour inherited - & case for a more progressive alternative 👇[1/]
neweconomics.org/2025/07/the-...
NEW:
There’s been a lot of discussion lately about rising graduate unemployment.
I dug a little closer and a striking story emerged:
Unemployment is climbing among young graduate *men*, but college-educated young women are generally doing okay.
www.ft.com/content/a9ea...
Refreshing piece here on complexity of graduate job market, going beyond just blaming 'AI'.
Quite like this (👇) on health/care sector - you see a similar picture in UK occupational growth projections. Unsurprising if you think about it given ageing pop, but lost amidst tech-focussed policy debate!
Table from government impact assessment suggesting 150,000 people will be pushed into poverty by the amended proposed cuts & changes to disability and health benefits
The updated poverty impact assessment for the disability benefits cuts once again offsets the impact of not proceeding with the previous government's proposed changes to the WCA
The impact of actual changes happening in the real world is likely to be closer to 250k people pushed into poverty
See also my talk at #LSEFestival with LSE's Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, where I delve into more of the trends in job quality and the state of local labour markets:
www.lse.ac.uk/Events/LSE-F...
[2/2]
We've seen alarming trends in in-work poverty in the UK - despite rises in the Living Wage.
I've written a piece for @lsepoliticsblog.bsky.social looking at the role 'good work' can play in tackling this, based on @neweconomics.bsky.social analysis:
blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...
[1/2]
Ok so yeah, this has quickly become the #1 misunderstanding about the canceled grants
the grants are not “subsidies” or “entitlements” to Harvard or Princeton or whatever
they aren’t going into universities’ endowments
they are competitive contracts won by these universities to do research
Text from a DWP press release: In the current dysfunctional system, a person is placed in binary categories of either “fit for work” or “not fit for work” through the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – an assessment the government has said it will either reform or replace, so it no longer drives people who want to work to a life on benefits. Through this process, those not fit for work are told they have Limited Capability for Work Related Activity (LCWRA) – meaning they won’t receive employment support or further engagement from the system at any point following their assessment – effectively abandoning and locking them out of work indefinitely.
This, from a DWP press release yesterday (gov.uk/government/n...), is outrageous
In two short paragraphs it peddles multiple falsehoods about the current system that will be used to justify upcoming cuts & changes
Here's what MPs & journalists should be challenging... 🧵
Pleased to see the launch of the first output from our @irhws.bsky.social project today, exploring disabled workers' experiences of remote & hybrid working and putting forward a number of policy recommendations for the government. Thread below on some of our key findings 👇
Interesting piece.
There's a related but different point which sounds techy but matters. Under UC those without kids & not on UC-health (though many will still have a health condition) don't receive a 'work allowance'. Which makes p/t work much less attractive than it should be....
Civil servant source says DOGE has made agencies much less efficient: "Work has ground down to a stunning degree and management is spending a significant amount of time responding & preparing to respond to the chaos incited by the never ending barrage of EOs & accompanying memos"
Many make no sense🧵
Why do we see so few working class and ethnic minority young people in professional jobs?
Important new @nuffieldfoundation.org funded research using large-scale employer data sheds new light on the processes through which these inequalities arise.
1/
The rocketing Council Tax burden at the bottom of the income distribution quietly recreating the worst problems of the Poll Tax www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/risi...
I’m not keen on the framing of this story, which veers at least close to blaming Rayner for not reporting the messages about herself in 2022. Let’s not pretend that for women reporting sexist abuse about yourself is some kind of risk free exercise
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Here we see a slightly different UK pattern: young men appear more liberal than they used to be, but women becoming more so [this is 'two-speed liberalisation' in the UK vs 'polarisation' in the US/South Korea]. But nb the indicator here is patterns of party support so unpicking this tricky
This is why you don't design curricula around "jobs of the future".
We can't predict the future but we do know what general skills and knowledge will be valuable whatever job you do.
Great article from @lizziedearden.bsky.social on the Single Justice Procedure, which now accounts for more than half of all criminal cases. Vast majority have no representation for the defendant and they can be decided in under a minute - w/ lifelong consequences. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/01...
Some people in recent days have alleged a ‘cover-up’ over the grooming & rape of hundreds of young girls in predominantly northern UK towns, leading to calls for a ‘national’ public inquiry into child sexual exploitation
FWIW here’s a non-exhaustive list of inquiries into #CSE in last 12 yrs…
Christopher Hood has died today. Public administration has lost one of its absolute best. RIP
Big shout out to the 36% of Lib Dem voters who don't have a favourable view of liberalism.