The UK labour market has become more challenging for all jobseekers, with unemployment particularly high among young people and those with limited education and skills. Research published today by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation describes the difficulty of job searching for young people seeking low-skilled work, examining three contrasting local labour market areas in England and Wales.

The report was co-authored by Professor Becky Tunstall (University of York) and Professor Anne Green (IER), Ruth Lupton, Simon Watmough and Katie Bates (LSE).

This bulletin considers some of the recent changes in the welfare to work policy domain. Examples are drawn from the IER evaluation of the City Strategy initiative. Other important developments are also discussed with relevance to future implications for the planning, orchestration and delivery of welfare to work services, including the flagship programme of the Coalition Government, the Work Programme and the benefit reform known as Universal Credit. The Bulletin can be downloaded here.

Today sees the publication of a report of findings from research undertaken by a team at the Warwick Institute for Employment Research and the Institute of Fiscal Studies. The project considered the impact of changes in the structure of employment and pay on income inequality and poverty. It combined employment projections with a tax and benefit model to simulate the distribution of household income, poverty and inequality.

The research found that changes in the labour market, combined with changes to the tax and benefit system, over the next decade are likely to increase relative poverty rates across the UK. It also found that changes that might be expected to lead to lower poverty, such as reducing the gender pay gap or rebalancing regional growth, are (by themselves) unlikely to do so.

The full report is available on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website.

Two articles from IER staff, Dr Michael Orton and Dr. Clare Lyonette, have been shortlisted for this year’s SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence, the winner of which will be announced at the BSA conference in April 2012. The prize is awarded annually to one paper in each of the BSA’s four prestigious journals: Cultural Sociology; Sociological Research Online; Sociology; and Work, Employment and Society.

The prize is awarded to the paper published in the previous year’s volume judged to represent innovation or excellence in the field. The IER nominations both appeared in Work, Employment and Society in the previous year and will be considered alongside three other short-listed articles. To find out more about the articles by Clare and Michael, see:

Clare Lyonette, Gayle Kaufman and Rosemary Crompton ‘We both need to work’: maternal employment, childcare and health care in Britain and the USA, Work, Employment and Society 25: 34-50.

Michael Orton Flourishing Lives: the capabilities approach as a framework for new thinking about employment, work and welfare in the 21st century, Work, Employment and Society 25: 352-60.