Report

Labour Market Outlook Q2 2023

This report from UK think tank Resolution Foundation looks at the employment rates of particular groups during the pandemic and the financial crisis.

The UK has seen more strikes in the past year than in any since the 1980s. These strikes have been concentrated in the public and transport sectors, where unionisation rates are highest. The public and public-funded sectors have seen a bigger pay hit than the private sector overall, but there are exceptions – highly unionised transport workers have seen no average real pay hit but lots of strikes, whereas un-unionised personal service workers haven’t gone on strike but have seen big pay cuts. Meanwhile, vacancies have increased more in the public sector. In the long run, the need to staff the public sector will push the Government to limit or redress some of the relative pay cuts in coming years. In our Lifting the Lid section, we compare the employment rates of particular groups during the pandemic and the financial crisis. The data show that part-time workers and workers without degrees fared especially badly in the pandemic, which also hit different regions much more unequally.