IER News & blogs
International visitor to IER
Dr David Owen met Professor Sawako Yufu from Waseda University in Tokyo to discuss IER work on the DfE Teacher Workload Survey and research into teacher earnings for the NASUWT on March 22nd.
Prof Yufu is a quantitative researcher who studies teachers' working conditions and educational reform in Japan. She runs a regular survey of teacher workload in Japan. Her particular interests are in the effect which the school environment and neighbourhood have on workload and trends in workload over time.
Invitation to speak at annual OECD meeting
IER’s Director, Chris Warhurst, has been invited to speak at the OECD’s annual Local Economic and Employment Development (LEED) meeting. The session will focus on putting skills utilisation into practice. The meeting takes place at the OECD in Paris over 17-18 May.
Dr David Owen comments on the UK monthly unemployment figures
The UK unemployment rate for 16-64 year olds increased very slightly over the last 3 months (November to February compared with August to October 2017), but this was composed of a small fall for men and a slightly larger increase for women. For the West Midlands, the unemployment rate fell very slightly for both men and women over this period, but the fall was larger for men than for women.
In the UK as a whole, the percentage of both men and women in the labour force and the percentage of men and women in work increased slightly. However, in the West Midlands, the percentage in work did not change, but the percentage of men in the workforce fell, slightly more than the fall for women. This suggests that the more favourable trend for the West Midlands may be the result of formerly unemployed people (mainly men) no longer looking for work.
At the local scale, unemployment has been increasing sharply (568 more JSA claims in February 2017 than December 2017 - an increase of 20.6%, but only 25 more than 1 February 2017) in Coventry during 2018 (for both men and women), but has fallen in Birmingham (by 783 or 3.6% and by 2.6 thousand or 11.3% 2017-18). However, the unemployment rate for Coventry is 2 per cent, less than half that for Birmingham (4.1 per cent).
Wales - Spring Statement 2018: austerity continues
Dr Dari Luchinskaya comments on the Office for Budget and Responsibility (OBR) forecasts and the picture that they paint for the economy in the coming years, as well as on the main Spring Statement headlines and any implications for Wales. Read her blog here.
LMI for All: Government careers strategy
An ongoing project, managed from IER since 2012, features in the Government's new Careers Strategy, published December, 2017. This Careers Strategy is part of the government’s plan 'to make Britain fairer, improve social mobility and offer opportunity to everyone'.
The Careers Strategy endorses the importance of 'LMI for All' as an authoritative source of labour market information to support career transitions into and through the labour market:
'The ‘LMI for All’ (Labour Market Information (LMI) for All) website provides one place to access multiple sources of robust LMI. It is being used successfully by developers to create careers apps and websites to help inform people who want information about their careers options. LMI for All data is also used in the job profiles on the National Careers Service website'. (p. 32)
A commitment is also given by Government to support and promote 'LMI for All':
Government has renewed the contract for LMI for All, so that people will continue to have up-to-date information about local labour markets. We will continue to promote the use of the service, and encourage the design of new apps and websites to help people navigate this information.