Productivity, Wages and the Labour Market

2008年金融危机以来，英国经济增长乏力，生产力停滞不前。虽然就业率仍然很高，但许多工作几乎没有保障，也没有培训和晋升的机会。自营职业是本世纪初至疫情期间增长最快的就业形式，其中大部分不稳定且工资低。最好的工作已经高度集中在这个国家的一小部分地区。这些趋势可能会对有才能的人的成功事业和发展造成障碍，对生产力产生不利影响。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，以及它们在推动经济产出不平等方面的综合作用及其对生产率的影响。该议程的一个跨领域部分是调查政策在解决工作不平等、促进好工作、收入增长和生产率方面的作用。我们提出了一个雄心勃勃的工作计划，结合了最先进的经济模型，仔细的计量经济学方法，并使用来自行政和其他来源的新的和现有的关联数据，为这一领域提供急需的证据。该项目由三个大链组成，每个链中包含多个项目。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。以中低收入工人为重点，我们将确定受教育程度较低的人成功的工作和公司的特点，重点关注这些工作所需的特殊技能。我们将考察以雇主为基础的培训和企业特征对工资增长的重要性。我们将研究职业结构如何随着国民最低生活工资的引入而变化。第二部分的工作将集中在自我雇佣和小型企业所有权在英国日益增长的重要性。研究个体经营在提高劳动者技能方面的作用；它在提供针对失业冲击的保险来源方面的重要性；以及自营职业如何导致收入和获得就业权利方面的不平等。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影响。我们将研究雇主所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。我们将使用这些措施来检查当地劳动力市场状况如何影响职业发展，特别是试图了解对妇女职业的影响，其中许多人无法长途通勤上班。我们将研究由工业变革引起的本地劳动力市场困难如何对职业和生产力产生长期影响。综合来看，这个研究项目的研究结果对于政府政策的制定至关重要，这些政策旨在促进就业、工资和生产力，特别是对于教育水平较低、背景不利或国家不太繁荣地区的人。我们将始终与高级决策者进行接触，包括通过圆桌会议将政府的不同部门聚集在一起，以确保我们的研究尽可能适合政策制定的需要，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.