IER: still doing a good job in 2025
It’s been a good year for good jobs policy
IER was established 45 years ago with funding from the UK Government and what is now the European Commission. Its task then was to provide labour market forecasts to support policymaking. Although government emphasis on skills has remained constant, government interest in employment policy more broadly has waxed and waned over the years.
However, 2025 will be remembered as the year that employment and labour markets become explicit, central tenets again in UK Government policy. Work has always been viewed as important for its material, social, psychological and economic benefits. Indeed, striving for full employment is a residual policy across governments globally and a goal of the United Nations. But this year, the UK Government launched a number of flagship actions to support and improve employment and labour markets: the Employment Rights Bill, Skills England, the Mayfield Review and a White Paper on Post-16 Education and Skills. It is also preparing to launch the new Fair Work Agency, a consolidation of a number of existing agencies into a single body long called for by IER. Cutting across all of these actions is an aim to create more good jobs. In all of these actions IER continues to demonstrate its relevance for policy-focused research.
IER project highlights over 2025
As ever, IER was successful over the year in securing funding from a range of sources to conduct various aspects of employment and the labour market. There are too many to name individually, but highlights include the launch in the spring of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)-funded creating healthy jobs project, exploring the premise that good quality jobs protect, even promote good health and, conversely, bad quality jobs create poor health amongst workers. It’s led by Chris Warhurst. Led by colleagues at Aberdeen University and funded by UKRI, we also launched a project with the aim to support a just transition to net zero. It seeks to address both the question of emissions reduction and the creation of co-benefits that improve societal welfare. Phil Taylor is the IER lead.
In a busy summer, we started a Joseph Rowntree Foundation-funded project to develop new measures of the performance of the UK labour market to complement our previous development of job quality measures. It’s led by Peter Elias and works across five UK Government departments plus devolved national and regional government. Co-led by Terence Hogarth with colleagues at Oxford University, we also launched VET2050 to develop a sustainable vision for England’s vocational education and training system. The ambitious aim is to raise youth participation in education and employment to the highest level among OECD countries. Led by Trine Larsen and funded by the European Commission’s DG EMPL, summer also saw the start of a new project examining the role of digital platforms in the ongoing transformations of the home care sector and was quickly followed by another internationally comparative project on the management of job quality and labour shortages with AI and algorithmic management in long-term care. It’s also led by Trine Larsen and funded in the UK by the ESRC and by the JPI for other European countries.
Finally, as 2025 closes, Skills England has launched the new Standard Skills Classification (SSC). Development of this classification was funded by DfE and led by IER and involves colleagues at Sheffield University and elsewhere. It’s been lauded by WonkHE as 'the most significant thing to happen to the skills landscape in a generation’. We also secured more NIHR funding, this time to evaluate the Fair Pay Agreement and its impact on employment rights in adult social care. It’s led by Phil Taylor and involves colleagues at Kings College, London. Finally, and going full circle, in collaboration with Cambridge Econometrics, we were awarded funding for the latest iteration of IER’s labour markets projections research. It is now funded by Skills England with its move to DWP.
On a personal front
The really good news is that four of our PhD students graduated this year: Andreana Glendinning, Gianni Anelli, Laura Hickman (in collaboration with Nottingham University) and Danya Nusseir. Danya was then also successful in securing an ESRC IAA Postdoctoral Impact Fellowship within IER that extends her PhD research into the development of a digital skills training toolkit for refugee women to aid their employment integration focusing on the UK and Jordan. Meanwhile, Gianni became a new Research Fellow within IER with an expertise in labour market Big Data and skills.
The really, really impressive personal news this year is that, in the context of the Warwick University celebrating 60 years since its founding, Peter Elias celebrates 50 years of work with IER. During that time Peter has been awarded a CBE for his services to social science, is surely the longest serving member of staff within the University and continues to be a stalwart of the Institute.
Please accept our thanks
As it did 45 years ago, all of IER’s current research has an explicit policy focus. As ever, we would like to thank all of our research sponsors for supporting our research and also thank all of the government departments and agencies, business and civil society organisations and trade unions for working with us to co-develop and co-deliver our research.
Improving understanding of employment and labour markets and using that understanding to improve jobs and how the labour market functions is genuinely a collaborative effort. We’re blessed in IER to be part of a coalition of the willing when it comes to wanting to deliver good jobs through better research.
We look forward to continuing to collaborate with you next year. In the meantime, we hope that you have a wonderfully happy and relaxing Festive Season and Hogmanay.