Productivity, Wages and the Labour Market

自2008年金融危机以来，英国经济增长乏力，生产率停滞不前。尽管就业率仍然很高，但许多工作几乎没有提供保障或培训和晋升的机会。从本世纪初到大流行期间，自雇是增长最快的就业形式，其中大部分是不稳定和低工资的。而且，最好的工作已经高度集中在这个国家的很小一部分地区。这些趋势有可能对有才华的人的成功职业生涯和晋升造成障碍，并对生产率产生不利影响。该项目的目的是进一步了解技能、工作和职业发展之间的相互作用、它们在推动经济成果不平等方面的综合作用及其对生产力的影响。这一议程的一个交叉部分是调查政策在解决工作中的不平等和促进良好工作、收入增长和生产率方面的作用。我们提出了一项雄心勃勃的工作方案，其中结合了最先进的经济模型、仔细的计量经济学方法以及使用来自行政和其他来源的新的和现有的相关数据，以提供这一领域亟需的证据。该项目由三大部分组成，每一部分都包含多个项目。第一部分工作将考察工作在发展英国工人的技能、职业和收入方面的作用。我们将以中低收入劳动者为重点，找出受教育程度较低的人成功的工作和企业的特点，重点放在这些工作需要的特定技能上。我们将研究以雇主为基础的培训和公司特征对工资增长的重要性。我们将研究随着国民生活工资的引入，职业结构是如何变化的。第二部分工作将集中在自营职业和小企业所有权在英国日益增长的重要性。我们将研究自营职业在发展工人技能方面的作用；它在提供应对失业冲击的保险来源方面的重要性；以及自营职业如何推动收入和获得就业权的不平等。我们将研究就业、自营职业和失业之间的转变，以及税收制度和其他政策变化如何影响这些转变。最后一项工作将研究行业和工作的地理分布对职业和生产力不平等的作用。我们将研究雇主要求的技能如何与全国各地和社会经济群体的求职者的技能相匹配。我们将利用这些措施来研究当地劳动力市场状况如何影响职业发展，特别是试图了解对女性职业生涯的影响，因为她们中的许多人无法长途通勤上班。我们会研究本地劳工市场因产业转变而出现的困难，如何对就业和生产力产生长远影响。综上所述，这一研究计划的结果将对政府制定旨在促进就业、工资和生产率的政策至关重要，特别是对教育水平较低、来自贫困背景或国家不太繁荣地区的人。我们将在整个过程中与高级政策制定者接触，包括通过将政府不同部门聚集在一起的圆桌会议，以确保我们的研究尽可能适应决策的需要，并确保我们的工作结果对政策制定产生影响。

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the UK has witnessed weak economic growth and stagnant productivity. While employment remained high, many jobs offer little security or opportunities for training and progression. Self-employment, much of which is unstable and low paid, was the fastest growing form of employment between the early 2000s and the pandemic. And the best jobs have become highly clustered in small parts of the country. These trends risk creating barriers to successful careers and progression for talented people, with detrimental effects on productivity. The aim of this project is to further understanding of the interactions between skills, jobs and career progression, their combined role in driving inequalities in economic outcomes and their consequences for productivity. A cross-cutting part of this agenda is to investigate the role of policy for tackling inequalities in work and promoting good jobs, earnings progression and productivity. We propose an ambitious programme of work that combines state of the art economic modelling, careful econometric methods, and the use of new and existing linked data from administrative and other sources, to provide much needed evidence in this area. This project is made up of three large strands, each of which contains multiple projects within it.The first strand of work will examine the role of jobs in developing the skills, careers and earnings of workers in the UK. Focussing on low-and medium-paid workers, we will identify the characteristics of jobs and firms in which less educated people succeed, with a focus on the particular skills these jobs need. We will examine the importance of employer-based training and of firms' characteristics for wage progression. We will look into how occupational structures change with the introduction of the National Living Wage.The second strand of work will focus on the growing importance of self-employment and small business ownership in the UK. We will study the role of self-employment in developing the skills of workers; its importance in providing a source of insurance against unemployment shocks; and how self-employment can drive inequalities in income and access to employment rights. We will examine the transitions between employment, self-employment, and unemployment and how the tax system and other policy changes affect these transitions.The final strand of work will study the role of the geographic distribution of industries and jobs for inequalities in careers and productivity. We will examine how the skills required by employers are matched to the skills of jobseekers, across the country and socio-economic groups. We will use these measures to examine how local labour market conditions affect career progression, in particular seeking to understand the effects on the careers of women, many of whom are unable to commute long distances for work. We will examine how local labour market difficulties caused by industrial change can have long term consequences on careers and productivity. Brought together, the findings of this research programme will be crucial to inform the development of government policies that seek to boost employment, pay, and productivity, particularly for people with lower levels of education, from disadvantaged backgrounds, or in less prosperous parts of the country. We will engage with senior policy-makers throughout, including through roundtables that bring different parts of government together, to ensure that we tailor our research to the needs of policy-making as best we can and to ensure that the findings of our work are impacting on policy development.