The new Labour Government is on a mission to grow the economy. It needs to. The last government left schools crumbling, hospitals stretched to breaking point, roads that badly need repairing and far too many families living in poverty. Thousands more health workers, teachers, police and – dare it be said, armed forces personnel need to be recruited. All of these actions need to be funded. To do so, the government hopes to raise tax revenues by growing the economy through encouraging investment in house building and the green transition.

It is nearly fifty years ago that the EU passed its first directive on equal pay for equal work or work of equal value. While mobilising the female workforce has been successful in most European countries, a persistent gender pay gap remains across Europe. To address these structurally embedded gender inequalities, the EU and its Members States have recently adopted the EU’s Pay Transparency Directive (2023). Although the UK is no longer an EU Member State and is not obliged to implement this directive, it remains to be seen whether the newly appointed Labour government will follow suit and adopt similar measures as part of its intention to address the pay inequalities in its election manifesto.

A new LMI for All blog by Dr Jeisson Cardenas-RubioLink opens in a new window and Gianni Anelli-LopezLink opens in a new window on Chat-GPT and the UK Labour Market: A Year in Review extends on the analysis of their previous blog to show how things have developed over the past six months, incorporating fresh insights with data up to December 2023.

Last year, 2023, was The European Year of Skills. Its purpose was to address skills shortages and promote reskilling and upskilling. It is also intended that workers acquire the right skills to access quality jobs. Such aims are laudable and extend the strong and continuous emphasis on the importance of skills by the European Commission. However, policy on management is also needed.

It is almost seven years since the introduction of the apprenticeship reforms in Spring 2017. Since then, apprenticeship provision has changed dramatically for both apprentices and apprentice employers.

The publication of the latest apprenticeship data enables an analysis of a further complete 12 months of the apprenticeship programme, the lasting effects of the 2017 apprenticeship reforms (of which the levy has been the most impactful) as well as the more recent pandemic.