You can find the definitive starter pack for my fantastic @resfoundation.bsky.social colleagues here👇

bsky.app/starter-pack...

Thanks Adam for this and for your interesting points on firms!

Between some to a lot would be absorbed by higher housing costs. But i) the wage gains in early career are long lasting (even if you move to another labour market), and ii) property tax reform would mean the Government can capture those higher housing costs to spend on e.g. better public services.

For our full report, co-authored with Richmond Egyei, ‪@tasoskitsos.bsky.social @gthwaites.bsky.social
@dalilariba.bsky.social & Enrico Vanino with even more charts see 👇

www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

So what should we do about this?

A) Build houses ALL types of housing in the most productive labour markets - including social and affordable housing.

B) Reform property taxes to tax housing properly.

C) Think hard about how to move the highest paying firms and functions around.

Instead, what matters is where high-value firms & functions - like headquarters - cluster.

FTSE listed companies are most likely to headquarter in London, and much less likely to headquarter in Birmingham, for example.

So what about differences in industry mix, occupations and firm size across England? We find that these explain little of the differences in pay between places. Most of the variation in pay is within industries and within firm size (the light blue bars in the chart below).

Some large cities - such as Birmingham and Manchester - fall below the regression line. I.e. they have smaller place effects that you would expect for their size.

So, how does place drive regional pay inequality?

One explanation is agglomeration - i.e. larger labour markets pay more. But we find that doubling a labour market’s size lifts pay by only 3.9 per cent, explaining just 24 per cent of the place premium.

People effects are smaller than place, accounting for about 1/4 of the gap. So, high-skilled workers do earn more everywhere, but place matters more.

Sorting matters too. High-earning-potential workers move to high-pay areas. That clustering explains 42 per cent of the overall wage variance.

Previously, research found that just 12% of the differences in pay was due to place. But using new methods, and new data, we find that *one-third* (34%) of the pay gap between areas is place.

Move an average worker from Dudley to Harrogate and they pocket an extra £1,300 a year (~5 per cent).

Because we follow the same workers as they switch jobs and regions, we can split wage gaps into “people effects” vs “place effects.”

We use the Longitudinal Education Outcomes dataset – a rich dataset which includes almost every worker in England born after 1985 - to track how 22-36-year-olds pay changes as they move across all 155 of England's Travel-to-Work Areas.

Thanks Giles!

With more day-to-day spending on health, and capital spending on defence, it's a step closer to being a country of doctors and nurses…with a lot of jets and tanks

This is based on the latest UK data (February 2025).

But with tariffs ramping up from March and trade flows shifting, one thing’s certain: there’s more volatility ahead.

As of February, the biggest contributor to that surge is... non-ferrous metals.

Exports of non-ferrous metals to the US (aluminium, copper, and *precious metals*) are up 1,358% since Feb 2024.

This isn't a global trend: exports to the RoW fell 50% since Feb 2024.

Non-seasonally adjusted UK goods exports to the US have jumped 31% since September 2024 (vs -1% to RoW), and are up 11% since February 2024 (vs -10% to the RoW).

What are we sending? More cars? More pharma?

Not quite.