IER News & blogs

A recent report from the Resolution Foundation suggests that youth unemployment could rise by 640,000 this year and the Association of Colleges is predicting around 100,000 leavers will find it difficult to gain work and work-based learning. So with these record unemployment levels amongst young people predicted, an important issue that is likely to emerge strongly for the careers profession from the COVID-19 pandemic is exactly how educational institutions can maximise the impact of their work with parents and carers to support the young people in their care with their career education and progression. This, of course, also has the potential to help young people continue to learn and develop whilst away from their schools for any reason, including any future periods of social isolation that might be necessary as a result of recurrent waves of infection.

A new report examining skill utilisation has been co-authored by Chris Warhurst with the OECD. It includes inputs from Peter Dickinson, also of IER. Focusing on the Leeds City Region in the UK, it reviews the different definitions and measures of skills use in workplaces. It shows why skill use matters for local development policies and outlines a set of measures for Leeds and other regions wanting to support better skill use.

The report can be found here.

While we may be in unprecedented times, a picture is already starting to emerge about the colossal impact that Covid-19 is having on labour markets, jobs and people.

The measures being implemented by countries to address the spread of Covid-19 are necessary as they will save lives but they are having a devastating impact on workers around the world. For example, in mid-March 2020, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that lockdown measures had already affected around 2.7 billion workers, representing around 81% of the world’s workforce. Moreover, the pandemic has intensified and expanded since the ILO’s initial estimates were published.

The UK, like most other countries, introduced a “lockdown” in late March in order to reduce contact between people thereby reducing infections and “taking pressure off” the National Health Service. This involved preventing most businesses involving social contact to stop operating and for workers to work from home wherever possible. The implication was a huge cut in economic activity. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research made estimates of considerable economic recession. The Bank of England’s view (on May 7th) of the probable impact of the lockdown is that the UK economy will shrink by 14% in 2020 but rebound quickly, with growth of 15% in 2021.

This blog presents tentative estimates of the possible impact of the lockdown on employment and enterprises within the Coventry and Warwickshire local enterprise partnership (LEP) area and for small areas within Coventry and Warwickshire.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its social distancing measures have brought unprecedented socio-economic challenges worldwide. One of the most urgent questions is how the labour force will be affected by the pandemic. The answer to this question will have considerable impact on the countries’ productivity, poverty and unemployment rates, etc. Consequently, the measurement of jobs, which can be performed without increasing the risk of contagion, has become a priority in the world. Given rich sources of information such as the Occupational information network (O*NET), more advanced countries such as the United States (U.S.) have started to estimate the number of jobs that can be performed at home (teleworkable jobs) or are at higher risk of contagion because their tasks involve close proximity with others (Dingel and Neiman, 2020; Mongey and Weinberg, 2020).