IER is inviting applications for an ESRC-funded PhD studentship from the Midlands Graduate School Doctoral Training Partnership. This Studentship is offered through IER in collaboration with the Living Wage Foundation. It will focus on 'Understanding employer delivery of good work in the UK' and will be supervised by Professor Chris Warhurst and Sally Wright. For full details about the scholarship click here and for information on how to apply here.

Application deadline: Thursday, 18th April at 12.00 noon. Interviews will take place on Monday 29th April.

Motto: “Very much enjoying all the people trying to explain away the pay gap stats by saying 'oh guys don't worry it's not a REAL pay gap, it's just that all our cleaners and PAs are women, and CEOs and directors are men!'” (@RebeccaCNReid on Twitter)

Regulation requires large companies, charities and public sector organisations in England, Wales and Scotland to disclose their gender pay gap data every year. The deadline for publishing gender pay data for the financial year 2018-19 has now passed and the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has promised to take action against all organisations which missed the deadline. Today activists, journalists and academics are poring over the tables and writing up early findings.

I will not engage with the findings but try to look at a few general issues which have emerged from the data and the coverage.

Firstly, there is a confusion between the gender pay gap and un/equal pay. Equal pay means that men and women at the same organisation, performing equal work must be given equal pay, in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 . Gender pay gap measures the difference in the average (hourly) wage of all men and women employed by an organisation. The pay gap is given as a percentage of men’s earnings – in 2018 it was at 17.9% in the UK. It does not measure the difference between the pay of men and women doing the same job, rather, it reflects the differences in men and women's work more generally, including the effect of men and women working in different occupations and in different time patterns. It also reflects the lack of women in more senior roles.

Secondly, the gender pay gap at a given organisation may widen from one year to the next even if the employer truly supports gender equality. This can be the result of a number of senior women leaving the company, or a number of junior women joining the company and taking up relatively low-paid positions. Following the same logic, the pay gap can be reduced by making lower paid women redundant and outsourcing their work, or reducing the pay of higher-earning men.

Overall, the introduction of mandatory gender pay gap reporting was an important step. Companies across the UK (with the exception of Northern Ireland) can no longer remain anonymous and there is hope that the public scrutiny provides an incentive for employers to improve their figures and avoid ‘reputational damage’.

An online survey catching up with UK graduates almost ten years after their graduation to gather data on their working lives has just launched. The survey is a key part of the fieldwork for the fifth wave of the Futuretrack longitudinal study into the careers of UK graduates.

The unique Futuretrack study is run by the University of Warwick’s Institute for Employment Research (IER) and funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Futuretrack follows a large sample of students who applied to university in 2005/2006 and aims to gather detailed insights into the kinds of jobs graduates are doing in the longer-term, how they got them, whether higher education has contributed to social mobility.

The Futuretrack Stage 5 survey, a key part of the fieldwork for the fifth wave of the Futuretrack longitudinal study into the careers of UK graduates, has just gone live. The research team sent out an email invitation to existing Futuretrackers via Qualtrics to participate in the online survey. We have been working hard designing and testing the survey, and are now looking forward to receiving the responses.

The unique Futuretrack study is run by the IER and funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Futuretrack follows a large sample of students who applied to university in 2005/2006 and aims to gather detailed insights into the kinds of jobs graduates are doing in the longer-term, how they got them, whether higher education has contributed to social mobility, and how the experiences of the Futuretrack cohort compares with earlier graduate cohorts.

In Stage 5, we have placed an increased focus on the varied ways of navigating the labour market, as 'non-standard' forms of employment (anything short of a 9-5 permanent job) are becoming more common. We also place more emphasis on people's personal circumstances, housing situation and family life, as these issues start to become more pertinent. We hope to explore some of these issues in more detail through interviews with respondents.

The last time we were in touch with the Futuretrack participants was back in 2011/12, when we looked at what kinds of jobs recent graduates were doing around two years after their graduation. The subsequent report presented the main findings, including graduates' views about their jobs, choices about higher education, and outlooks for the future.

The new fifth stage, Degrees of Advantage, provides a timely opportunity to catch up with the Futuretrackers to see how they have navigated the labour market over the longer term. The fieldwork will comprise an online survey that should take around 20 minutes to complete, hosted by Qualtrics surveys. New to Stage 5 is the collection and analysis of qualitative data to shed more light on participants' experiences since graduating to date.

The Futuretrack study is the latest in a series of national graduate labour market studies carried out at the IER, including Moving On and Seven Years On (1995 graduates) and Class of '99 (1999 graduates), as part of IER's research area on higher education and the graduate labour market.

The new fifth stage research team is led by Dr Daria Luchinskaya, with Professor Chris Warhurst and Professor Peter Elias, and Gaby Atfield, Dr Wil Hunt, Rosie Day and Stef Poole at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research. The research team can be contacted with any questions at Futuretrack2006@warwick.ac.uk.

As part of his second IAS funded visit IER visit, Professor Philip Taylor, Federation University Australia, will give a workshop on Challenges of the contrarian: Lessons from studies on workforce ageing. It will be held on 14 March, 12.30 - 13.30 in room B0.41/43, ground floor, Social Sciences building. Although primarily targeted at early career scholars and researchers across the University, it is also open to anyone with an interest in the topic.

If you are interested in attending this free event please contact Lynne Marston at L.Marston@warwick.ac.uk by Tuesday, 12 March 4pm for the sandwich order.