This paper addresses the issue of underemployment in the UK labour market – the demand for hours of work is less than workers’ willingness to supply extra hours. Workers would like to work more hours, but there is insufficient product demand to justify additional hours. This...

One of the main puzzles associated with the Great Recession has been the muted increase in recorded unemployment in the UK. In this paper we explore possible explanations for the behaviour of the UK labour market during the period of the recession. We establish that there has been significant...

This paper considers some of the implications of the increase in UK unemployment since the beginning of the Great Recession. The major finding is that the sharp increase in unemployment and decrease in employment is largely concentrated on the young. This has occurred at a time when the size of...

A major objective of the government during the Great Recession has been severely to restrict public sector real wage growth. One potential advantage of performance-related pay schemes is that they naturally offer greater wage responsiveness to fluctuations in the business cycle. Based on...

Under the Government's New Deal proposals to help create jobs for the young unemployed, employers are offered margtnal employment subsidies. Such interventions involve relative changes in the firm's fixed and variable labour costs. In turn, cost changes have implications for both employment and...

Under the Government's New Deal proposals to help create jobs for the young unemployed, employers are offered margtnal employment subsidies. Such interventions involve relative changes in the firm's fixed and variable labour costs. In turn, cost changes have implications for both employment and...

A radical reform of National Insurance was implemented in April I999. One objective of the reform was to stimulate job creation. This note analyses the effect of the changes in employers' contributions on employment. We find that the reform could stimulate the creation of about 200,000 jobs in...