Abstract
There is growing evidence of the problematic nature of the UK’s ‘flexible labour market’ with rising levels of in-work poverty and insecurity. Yet successive governments have stressed that paid work is the route to inclusion, focussing attention on the divide between employed and unemployed. Past efforts to measure social exclusion have tended to make the same distinction. The aim of this article is to apply Levitas et al.’s (2007) framework to assess levels of exclusionary employment, i.e. exclusion arising directly from an individual’s labour market situation. Using data from the Poverty and Social Exclusion UK survey, results show that one in three adults in paid work is in poverty, or in insecure or poor quality employment. One third of this group have not seen any progression in their labour market situation in the last five years. The policy focus needs to shift from ‘Broken Britain’ to Britain’s broken labour market.
Highlights
There is growing evidence of the problematic nature of the UK’s ‘flexible labour market’ with rising levels of in-work poverty and insecurity
The argument that individuals benefit from paid work is backed by an emphasis on the civic responsibility to work, and the obligation on those in receipt of out-of-work benefits to search for work (DWP, 2010b)
While poverty rates vary between measures, there is a high degree of consistency in terms of the personal risk factors associated with each and these provide a very familiar picture of disadvantage
Summary
There is growing evidence of the problematic nature of the UK’s ‘flexible labour market’ with rising levels of in-work poverty and insecurity. Using data from the Poverty and Social Exclusion UK survey, results show that one in three adults in paid work is in poverty, or in insecure or poor quality employment One third of this group have not seen any progression in their labour market situation in the last five years. This neat binary division is problematic for many reasons, not least for ignoring the high levels of movement between categories and the high level of benefits flowing to those in work without any apparent moral decline (Tomlinson and Walker, 2010; Coote and Lyall, 2013) The focus on this divide serves to divert attention away from the deep and growing divisions within the employed group. Over the last 35 years, policy changes combined with the effects of wider economic restructuring have produced rising inequality and insecurity for those in employment, so that a growing number enjoy few if any of the supposed benefits of paid work (Gregg and Wadsworth, 2011)
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