ReWAGE is fortunate in having some of the UK’s foremost thinkers on its Expert Group, drawn from leading universities and research organisations from 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 turning the spotlight onto ReWAGE expert Peter Elias, Emeritus Professor in the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick.

Background:

Peter studied in the sciences before undertaking his doctoral studies in applied labour economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Peter has worked at the Institute for Employment Research for over 40 years across a wide variety of research areas.

From October 2004 until 2016 Peter acted as the Strategic Advisor for Data Resources to the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), assisting the ESRC and other research funding councils and agencies with plans to develop data resources for research across the social sciences and at the boundaries between the social sciences and other disciplines.

Peter was awarded a CBE for services to social science in the Queen's birthday honours list in June 2011, and conferred as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2019.

Area of expertise:

Evaluation of large-scale government programmes; statistical monitoring of the status of particular groups in the labour market; labour market classifications; the study of occupational change; the relationship between further and higher education; vocational training and labour market outcomes; and access to and research use of administrative data.

Why Peter became a ReWAGE expert:

ReWAGE brings together labour market analysts from a wide variety of fields of study, including economics, sociology, education, and psychology, and people who are labour market practitioners, such as careers guidance, human resources specialists and local labour market development. This creates a great environment for the exchange of knowledge and research findings, ensuring that the work of ReWAGE is grounded and contributes directly to the practical improvement of the many ways in which people move into and through the labour market.

What achievement makes Peter most proud:

He is proud to have worked with many of the most talented and influential labour market analysts over his working life. As the saying goes ‘Variety is the spice of life’ and he has found great satisfaction and richness from the wide variety of studies he has been engaged in during his working life

Recent projects

• Developing a Skills Taxonomy – funded by the Department for Education.
• Improving UK job quality data; ReWAGE subgroup – funded by the Warwick University’s Research and Impact Services.
• Defining STEM occupations – funded by the Royal Society

Other interests:

Having moved into what he terms ‘semi-retirement’ (though his wife disagrees with this definition!) Peter finds time to chair The Arts Society Coventry and also to undertake fund raising for the development of a local park in Coventry. In what little time he finds outside these interests and his work for the IER he can be found on his allotment garden cultivating organic produce.

Recent publications

• Promoting public engagement with longitudinal research
• Covid 19 and graduate careers
• What a difference a year makes: the impact of Covid 19 on graduate careers.
• Present Tense, Future Imperfect? Young People's pathways into work.

 

ReWAGE’s Expert Group is uniquely placed to offer the government informed practical advice and policy recommendations to support its strategic response to the recovery and renewal of work and employment in the UK as it tackles the impact of Covid-19 and other challenges.