Yesterday, MPs voted to approve raising employees’ National Insurance Contributions (NICs) by 1.25 percentage points, breaking a key manifesto promise not to raise taxes. While the government marketed the rise as “progressive”, in reality it is an intergenerationally unfair tax reform which will affect younger generations the most. Lizzie Simpson, IF Researcher, explains. A regressive… Read more »
Category: Employment
Overqualified and underemployed: a sombre snapshot of the labour market for young people
Graduates are leaving university with scant prospects, feeling let down by policy-makers and waking up to the generational divide. Carlotta Hartmann, IF Intern, investigates the labour market pressures facing young Brits today Graduates feeling let down Young people across OECD countries have been disproportionately affected by the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to… Read more »
National insurance, intergenerational fairness and paying for social care
Robert Ashton looks at how National Insurance could be changed for the better, raising more money to pay for social care without penalising younger generations, many of whom are already paying a greater part of their incomes than previous generations on high rents and student loan repayments. How can we make National Insurance work better… Read more »
Freedom and injustice in the time of coronavirus
Last week, the majority of COVID-19 restrictions in England were removed, marking the biggest return to “normality” that we have seen since the beginning of the pandemic. However, this does not mean the end of restrictions for everybody, as IF Researcher, Lizzie Simpson, discusses how the new settlement affects younger people differently, and how this… Read more »
Intergenerational fairness: an economic approach
Matthew Oulton, Secretary of the UK’s Young Fabians Economy and Finance Network, economics student and young Labour activist from the Wirral, joins IF’s Worldwide Blog Week to discuss, from a left perspective, how to achieve intergenerational fairness post COVID-19 After a year of locking up the young largely to save the old, it’s hard to… Read more »
How inflation could blow up the younger generation
Commodity prices have already gone up sharply around the world and many other prices seem to be headed north. To fight COVID-19 the government has printed huge quantities of new money and many economists are predicting the result will be a sharp rise in inflation. Angus Hanton, IF Co-founder, asks what this would mean for the old and the… Read more »
Young people hit hardest by rising unemployment
As we approach the milestone landmark of a year since the first UK lockdown began, newly released data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal just how damaging this past year has been for young people’s employment prospects. Lizzie Simpson, IF Researcher, explains
Economic impact of COVID-19 continues to disadvantage younger people
Last week, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published new data detailing the current state of the UK’s labour market and businesses. This has revealed not only the damaging impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to have on the UK’s economy as a whole, but also the disproportionally negative impact that it is having… Read more »
Government should lift the state pension “triple lock” next year, argues Treasury Select Committee
A new report from the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee has made a range of recommendations regarding how the government should address some of the economic challenges which the COVID-19 crisis has caused. One of its most eye-catching suggestions is that the “triple lock” on the State Pension should be lifted next year to… Read more »
“Crisis cohort”: What it means to graduate into a recession
As we enter what is forecast to be the worst recession in 300 years, one cohort that has felt the full extent of the COVID-19 pandemic is the graduating class of 2020. IF Research Intern Ellie Maher assesses what it means to graduate into a recession, and the impacts of this on both short and… Read more »