The COVID pandemic has exposed middle-class self-employed people who have lost work to the very low rates of benefit available on Universal Credit in the UK (even including the supplement recently added by the Treasury). Envious eyes have looked across the Channel to Germany where support for the unemployed is so much more generous.

In a recent edition of Radio 4’s Analysis programme, Professor Noel Whiteside described the historical origins of the very different systems of social insurance found in both countries.

Erika Kispeter gave a talk at the Westminster Higher Education Policy Conference online event entitled ‘The graduate labour market post COVID-19' on 20 October 2020. The conference focused on how university careers services, employers and governments should prepare students for employment in the UK in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Erika’s talk on the 'The impact of postgraduate qualifications on employment prospects' drew on the results of the recently completed research project 'Degrees of Advantage? A longer-term investigation of the careers of UK graduates', the latest stage of Futuretrack, IER’s longitudinal study of graduate careers. The study follows a cohort of UK graduates who started their university education in 2006.

Working class women have borne the brunt of the cuts to working hours as employers struggle to ride out the pandemic, according to new findings published today by social inequality researchers from the University of Nottingham and Warwick's Institute for Employment Research. Working class women were the worst affected by spring’s UK-wide lockdown, with 40% reporting psychological distress in April.

Today’s briefing paper – 'Carrying the work burden of the COVID-19 pandemic: working class women in the UK: Employment and Mental Health' focuses on patterns of employment and mental health in the first three months of lockdown, as revealed by data from the monthly Understanding Society COVID-19 UK survey, and explores to what extent the experience of working class women differs from middle class women and from men.

Professor Clare Lyonette from IER said: "Many working class areas in the north are included in the higher tier groups of the government's new 3-tier system of local restrictions in England. The effects of any future lockdowns, either local or national, could be far-reaching and extremely damaging for working class women who provide vital work, both paid and unpaid'.

Read the press release here.

New research is being conducted by Professor Tracey Warren at the University of Nottingham and Professor Clare Lyonette at IER, with the Women’s Budget Group. Latest findings, reported in the Telegraph, suggest that the cumulative burden of housework, childcare, home-schooling and paid employment during the pandemic is having a disproportionate impact on women’s psychological wellbeing.

During lockdown, 70% of employed women living in couples reported bearing the main responsibility for washing/ironing (13% of men). Far more working mothers than fathers had main responsibility for childcare and 59% of employed mothers reported having main responsibility for additional home-schooling (9% of men). Women’s paid work has also been affected. More women than men are keyworkers, highest among working-class women, and a much higher proportion of female keyworkers are in frontline roles involving face-to-face interaction, putting both themselves and their families at risk, e.g. Health and social care; Education and child-care. Other women, especially working class women, have been furloughed, raising the risk of later job losses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, women's psychological wellbeing has been badly impacted, with working class women most likely to be psychologically distressed.