ReWAGE is fortunate in having some of the UK’s foremost thinkers on its Expert Group, drawn from leading universities and research organisations across the UK. Between them they have a huge breadth of knowledge, covering such subjects as the labour market, job quality, employment relations and the changing nature of work.

This week we are pointing the spotlight onto ReWAGE expert Mike Brewer, Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Economist of the Resolution Foundation, who is ReWAGE’s expert on welfare reform and labour market policy. The Resolution Foundation is an independent think-tank focused on improving the living standards of those on low-to-middle incomes.

Background:

Mike is Chief Economist and the Deputy Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation, where he oversees all aspects of the Foundation’s research agenda. He is also a visiting Professor at the Department of Social Policy at the LSE. Between 2011 and 2020, he was a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex. Mike has also worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and HM Treasury. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Essex.

Area of expertise:

Mike is interested in all aspects of inequality in income and wealth, including the role of the labour market and the tax and benefit system. In his academic work, he evaluated several welfare reforms and active labour market policies, including various policies to encourage lone parents to work, and cuts to Local Housing Allowance. He also has a long background in using microsimulation methods.

Why Mike became a ReWAGE expert:

I was inspired to join during the Covid-19 pandemic, which represented the largest disruption to the UK labour market since the Second World War. More generally, my career has always been about providing analysis and research to inform public policy debates.

What achievement makes Mike most proud:

At the Resolution Foundation, we were among the first to notice that the impact of the pandemic on the labour market had a U-shaped pattern by age, with younger and older workers more likely to face disruption. Through our own data collection and our analysis of other surveys, we tracked how this persisted through the pandemic.

Recent achievements:

I was delighted to be able to co-author the first chapter of the IFS Deaton review of inequality.

Current projects

The Resolution Foundation is engaged on a major project to develop a renewed economic strategy for the UK, the Economy 2030 project. I have also been leading our work tracking the impact of the cost of living crisis on households.

Other interests:

I am a visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Recent publications

• The Living Standards Outlook 2023 – a look at how families were coping at the end of 2022, and what prospects were for 2023. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/the-living-standards-outlook-2023/
• Trends in income and wealth inequalities, https://ifs.org.uk/inequality/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequalities/
• Household Earnings and Income Volatility in the UK, 2009–2017, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10888-021-09517-3
• Mike is the author of What do we know and what should we do about inequality? published by SAGE in 2019.

ReWAGE’s Expert Group is uniquely placed to analyse the latest work and employment research to advise the government on addressing the challenges facing the UK’s productivity and prosperity, such as Covid-19, the cost-of-living crisis and labour shortages.