Reports

Short-time work is a subsidy for temporary reductions in the number of hours worked in firms affected by temporary shocks. Evidence suggests that it can have large positive effects on employment and can be more effective than unemployment insurance or universal transfers. This column discusses how the COVID-19 crisis – with its mandated reduction in hours of work and massive liquidity crunch for firms – is a textbook case for the use of short-time work. Taking into account available evidence and the current situation, it proposes guidelines to effectively implement short-term work.

The public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to reduce household incomes as workers lose their jobs, earnings fall, and plummeting share prices and interest rates lead to lower incomes from savings and investments. Newly released official statistics on incomes and poverty in the UK in 2018–19, published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), show this downturn will come after a sustained period of income stagnation in the latter half of the last decade – which itself followed only a brief recovery from the late 2000s recession.

Council tax matters. It matters to local government as, at over £31 billion a year, it now makes up over half of its funding for non-education expenditure.

Matched employee-employer data from the UK are used to analyze the wage premium to working in an innovative firm.

The tax and benefit system has undergone significant reform since 2010, with large cuts to working-age benefits, a rise in the main rate of VAT, increases in the rate of the state pension, and reductions in direct tax, including a big rise in the income tax personal allowance. In this briefing note we investigate the impact that these reforms have had on household incomes.

Labour’s 2019 general election manifesto pledged to “bring rail, mail, water and energy” alongside “the broadband-relevant parts of BT” into public ownership. In this report we set out the scale of this proposed programme of nationalisation and some of the key issues it would raise.

Ahead of the upcoming General Election, there has again been extensive discussion about the role that the private sector plays within the National Health Service (NHS). Labour has vowed to ‘end and reverse privatisation in the NHS in the next parliament’, signalling an ambition to end – or at least significantly reduce – the role played by private providers in treating NHS-funded patients.

Relative in-work poverty has been steadily rising since 1994–95, meaning that the incomes of poorer working households have not been keeping up with those of middle-income households.

The Labour Party plans to increase income tax for individuals with annual taxable incomes over £80,000. Under the current system, income tax is payable on incomes above the personal allowance of £12,500 a year. The 40% higher rate becomes payable at £50,000, and the 45% additional rate kicks in at £150,000. Labour would introduce a new 45% income tax rate starting at £80,000 a year, and a new 50% rate starting at £125,000, from 2020–21.

Support for childcare and the early years is shaping up to be a major issue in this election campaign. To date, both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats have promised enormous increases in the generosity of England’s free childcare system,[1] with money for extra funding per hour, extra children, extra hours and – in the Liberal Democrats’ case – extra weeks of the year. The Conservative party is reported to be considering its own package of reforms.

This Election Briefing Note provides a summary of the current higher education funding system in England and investigates the two big reform packages that are currently on the table going into the 2019 General Election.

Employing public sector workers to help deliver public services is a major part of what government does. The number of workers employed by the government and how much they are paid matters not just for those individuals and their families, but also for the public finances and for the public services those employees help provide.

While the benefit system has undergone substantial reform over the past 10 years, there remain significant changes due to take place over the next parliament.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and associated recession, government borrowing soared to more than 10% of national income. Borrowing has since been reduced through a combination of net tax rises, cuts to the generosity of the working-age social security system and cuts to public service spending. In this briefing note, we provide an overview of what has happened to each of these areas since the crisis, highlighting where (and when) the spending cuts have fallen, and consider the long-term outlook for the make-up of public expenditure.

Minimum wages can play an important role in raising living standards, and have become an important part of a government’s toolkit in addressing low pay.