Jobs and work

Is income tax being cut for 32 million people?

The Treasury estimates 32 million will benefit from tax changes between 2015/16 and 2019/20.

Supermarket pay image—where do the figures come from?

Do workers at the four big supermarkets get a billion pounds’ worth of benefits and tax credits a year?

Real wages aren’t growing at their fastest rate in a decade

Real-terms total pay in Great Britain grew by 0.8% in the year to September 2018.

How have wages changed over the past decade?

The UK average weekly wage has fallen from around £540 to £520 in real terms over the past 10 years. Wages have levelled off since 2016.

Universal Credit isn’t the reason there are 1,000 more people a day in work

The total increase in employment could be driven by many things, especially population increase.

The Rates: National Minimum Wage, National Living Wage and Living Wage

What is the National Minimum Wage? What is a living wage? How different are they and what does the law say about them?

BBC Question Time: Recap and Factcheck

Question Time on 11 October 2018 came from Edinburgh. Topics covered included Universal Credit, Brexit, education in Scotland and whether it was quicker to order pizza or drugs.

Has austerity hit the most vulnerable the hardest?

Austerity policies have impacted the poorest households most. Despite this, since 2010 the poorest households have seen their post-tax incomes rise the most.

Doing a sterling job? How the UK’s employment record compares to the EU

Over the past eight years the UK’s employment growth has ranked 12th out of 28 EU countries. Our employment rate was fourth highest in the EU in the first three months of 2018.

Do new Universal Credit requirements affect women more?

Women make up the majority of single parent households, and some research suggests they could be more acutely affected by Universal Credit’s conditions.

Have 100,000 retail jobs been lost over three years?

There were almost 100,000 fewer filled retail jobs in June 2018 than over the same period three years earlier.

Real wage growth is just above 0%

This claim doesn’t factor in inflation, nor peoples’ total pay. Total pay in Great Britain is growing in real-terms by 0.2% in the three months to July 2018.

How many people on zero hours contracts want more hours?

Around 780,000 people were estimated to be on zero hours contracts in mid-2018.

What is unemployment?

How many people are unemployed in the UK?

Pay rises: how much do nurses, the police, teachers and MPs get paid?

All of these groups have had a reduction in pay since 2010, when you take into account inflation.

Is the government’s pay rise for public sector workers a real-terms pay cut?

The recently announced pay rises are either above or slightly below inflation forecasts. These don’t cover all public sector workers.

How the jobs market for young people has changed since 2010

Youth unemployment has fallen in the last eight years, and young people stay on in full time education more than they used to.

Did the Conservatives refuse to support 6500 British shipbuilding jobs?

Estimates for the economic and jobs impact of keeping a shipbuilding contract in the UK make assumptions that are unevidenced.

How many retail jobs have been lost this year?

Over the long term the number of UK retail jobs appear stable, but jobs in other sectors are growing.

Are pay packets growing?

Wages are lower than they were ten years ago, but on some measures have risen since last year.

What’s happened to employment since the vote to leave the EU?

Employment is up, unemployment is down and there are more people from outside the UK in work than before the Brexit vote.

Is youth unemployment down 40%?

The number of unemployed 16-24 year olds has fallen by 43% between 2010 and 2018.

Student ‘debts’ aren’t really debts

Politicians were accused of misrepresenting students’ finance options - so how does it work?