ReWAGE News Archive

Economic crises, technological change, the pandemic and the war in Europe have transformed national and international labour markets and the types and quality of available jobs the labour market, resulting in greater demands from employers for skilled workers and workers able to adapt to future changes.

ReWAGE's new paper, Adult career guidance and its role in skills development, argues that adult career guidance services should be the foundation of a skills system supporting those in work to remain employable and those out of work to gain employment.

The paper references international evidence to demonstrate how other countries are achieving this through legislation, strategic leadership, coordination, collaboration and professional standards, and makes recommendations on how the UK could improve its offer.

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 Professor Christina Beatty who is Professor of Applied Economic Geography at Sheffield Hallam University, and who is our expert on labour markets and productivity.

Next year marks a quarter century of successful minimum wage policy in the UK.

Building on the UK’s successful minimum wage policy to date, a new ReWAGE evidence paper: What next for a fair minimum wage? makes eight recommendations for a fair minimum wage, reflecting on how social norms of fairness have changed and whether the minimum wage still measures up to current perceptions of ‘fairness’.

Economic evidence suggests that the minimum wage has supported wage, jobs and productivity growth and contributed to greater labour market efficiency without fuelling high inflation and unemployment. Fixed each year by the independent Low Pay Commission it has been backed consistently since its introduction in 1999 by governments of both main political parties in power and has served as a positive policy role model for other countries.