Also I would recommend this 2016 paper by Dan Finn (pdf) which runs thru various lessons from overseas.
Ch 3 covers Dutch approach/ history on social insurance AND social assistance. Lots we can learn from, but not without some criticism too (e.g. screengrab below) core.ac.uk/download/pdf...

Some really good (worrying) analysis here from @theifs.bsky.social today: ifs.org.uk/publications...
Big story is how out-of-line UK is from rest of world, but most interesting bit for me is Table 1 on claims by time since last worked
Half of *new claims* last worked 5+ years ago or never worked: 1/

Our contention is that our approach to employment support is part of what is driving this. Lots of reasons why, but the killer charts are probably these two from our interim report.
Where we stand out is that people out of work in UK just don't access employment support; and that's only since 2011.

We're facing a load of problems in the labour market:
- Falling participation in labour force (lowest in a generation)
- Big inequalities in labour market pre-pandemic
- Two thirds of all people in poverty live in households where someone works
- We're only major economy where employment is falling

Was great to launch the final report of our Commission on the Future of Employment Support today www.employment-studies.co.uk/resource/wor...
Two years' work and huge amount of input and engagement with govt, service users, staff, employers, etc. THANK YOU to everyone who has been involved!
Thread..

And final point is that redundancies are very, very low. No signs of uptick in the 'HR1' notifications (blue) which are the better leading indicator of economic activity - in fact if anything fewer people than ever are being told they're at risk of being laid off.

... you see that *quarter-on-quarter* pay growth is above 1.5% - i.e. more than 6% year-on-year. Blue line below is whole economy, yellow private sector, black public sector.
(As an aside, public sector pay growth very weak recently, which recent govt decisions will fix...)

Then on earnings, nominal pay growth on annual measure (left graph) has fallen a bit to around 5% (with real earnings above 2%) but:
- This is still high by historic standards
- More importantly, these are year-on-year figures and if you look at more recent trends...

As there are still jobs being created.
On vacancies - below shows they've fallen from the stratospheric peaks two years ago, but are levelling off at around 900 thousand. Well above pre-pandemic levels.
Some wider industry surveys suggest a slight slowing, but not significant falls.

And just a word on young people, this shows proportion not in full-time education and out of work. More than 10% of young people are not in education and economically inactive - basically highest ever - while unemployment outside education is still pretty low (5% of all young people).
Not great.

So what's driving higher economic inactivity? Well as ever it's people off with long-term ill health (blue line below) which is still at 2.8 million - highest ever.
Student numbers have bumped up too (yellow), especially in last year, as have caring reasons (black).

First post on Bluesky and it's about jobs data...
Just a quick one as I'm holiday(!) but headlines:
- Employment still very weak
- LFS is volatile so don't read too much into small changes
- Earnings, vacancies look fairly strong to me - not sure about 'cooling'
- Lots to do but demand is there 1/