Jonathan Cribb

What first attracted you to IFS?

I remember coming across IFS in my second year at university – way back in 2008. It was the start of the Great Recession and economics was in the news every day. I became aware of IFS through the media of interviews with the (then) IFS Director Robert Chote. Almost simultaneously I started to become more aware of IFS research through my courses at university. The work looked exciting, varied and important. (It still is.) And I met two IFS researchers at a careers fair, who convinced me I should apply for a 6 week (paid) internship. The interview for that was so interesting I knew I wanted to come work here.  

Which projects are you working on at the moment?

As with all researchers at IFS, especially senior ones, I have a lot of different projects on the go at any one time. I am coming close to the end of a long-running academic project which studies how income inequalities have changed in high-income countries since the mid 1990s and the role played by changing labour markets and changing levels of redistribution undertaken through tax and benefit systems. A lot of my work is on pension systems, and we published a review of the UK pension system in Summer 2025. I am now designing new research projects on how people draw their retirement incomes and on how policy can respond to significant, but uncertain, demographic change.

What kind of things do you do during a typical day at work?

My job is very varied. I don’t really have a typical day. Over the course of a month, I will spend time working with other researchers in my team to develop our project ideas, push on existing projects, and discuss our plans for communicating our results. I have regular meetings with senior civil servants, and other ‘stakeholders’ e.g. from business, or international organisations that are interested in UK public policy. I will typically do some media interviews on research we are releasing or responding to a government announcement. I spend a lot of time providing feedback on new ideas or proposals for projects and on final reports and press releases from across IFS.

What do you particularly enjoy about the job?

After 15 years working at IFS, I still have what I call the “basic love of research”: I really want to know the answers to the questions we at IFS are asking. Every day I value my fantastic colleagues, who push me and others to be better. Finally, in my current role, I enjoy working with our Director Helen, and other senior members of our team into helping make sure that IFS is efficient, productive and fit for the future

How has your career progressed so far at IFS?

I started as a summer student (intern) in 2008 working on measuring innovation in patent data. I ended up joining as a Research Economist IFS in the autumn of 2011 (after a Masters) and I have worked on a wide variety of topics. I started working on education and poverty, but quick quickly ended up working more on pensions and labour market. I did a PhD part-time at UCL between 2012 and early 2020, and decided to stay at IFS afterwards because I enjoyed the combination of academic and policy research. I was promoted to Associate Director leading our work on retirement, savings, and ageing in 2022, and to Deputy Director in 2025. It’s been a great journey.

What have you learned from working here?

The key thing I have learned is how important, and rewarding, it is to work with talented colleagues. When I was a student I thought that the real key was getting my head down and working hard. That is important. But two heads are better than one. And three are generally better than two. Learning from my colleagues, and stress testing arguments with them, is both enjoyable and makes for much higher quality work.

How would you describe the working environment?

In one word: collegiate. We all want to do high-impact, high-quality, policy-relevant economic research. We work together to do that. The level of training and support we provide to junior staff is enormous – and that’s something I am really proud of. Teams of people work together to succeed.