A fun thing about kids learning to speak is when they don't know where words start and end. My son thinks the word is "helpme". As in, can you help me? Yes I can helpme

Today’s labour market stats were better than expected – headline unemployment didn’t rise thanks to a surprise Jan single month number, and payrolled jobs rose. Real wages are still growing (slowly), but war in the middle east clouds the outlook there. Thread from me and @hannahslaughter.bsky.social

I missed this: Govt published LPC's remit for the 2027 minimum wage rates on Monday (the rates coming in next month are already set). Main take-away is Govt wants a more cautious approach to the youth rates. It has dialed up the 'worry about employment' bit of the remit. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Useful to have an early labour market data point for Feb but why would you index to 95? 😅https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/09/britain-job-market-floundering-companies-cautious-hiring

OBR's lower net migration revision is *entirely* about more British people leaving, i.e. just follows ONS's updated estimates. (Even if you want the immigration number to go down, don't think anyone wants the emigration number to go up..?)

NEET estimates for Q4 2025 from ONS this morning. We already pretty much had the picture for Q4 from the main stats release last week (rising unemp) but let's run through the charts. And then zoom out. First - the number crept up ever so slightly. Importantly for comms the number remains below 1m.

Tomorrow the ONS will publish new data on the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET). This is important – and not just because the number is very close to one million…

New NEET data out tomorrow. I assume 1,000 think tank reports have used this song for a pun (maybe even an RF one) but it's now going round my head so here you go www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXKD...

Uphill in a bobsleigh, lots of work for those pushers

Fond of the UK's parochialism that it's Thames Valley police doing the arresting and not some uber crime agency. Similarly how in front of a packed Commons immediately before PM faces the opposition leader we see an MP ask something niche about their local area.

Life at the PDF mill is a hard, we need something to look forward to Robert

Speakers will include ... me! Looking forward to it. Do share with anyone you think might benefit from learning a bit about think tank world. We've been putting these events on for several years - they've always been well received. (Also by some distance our most-attended events).

Reminder for journos about the unemployment rate: the denominator isn't all people it's all people *working or looking for work*. A more accurate description of the youth unemployment rate would be "1 in 6 young people who want to work don't have a job". archive.is/202602180759...

First time at an all inclusive, decided the most otherwise-expensive thing available for free at the at bar was white vermouth so spent the evening drinking that. Maximised something but it wasn't utility

All contact lines are at all times receiving a high volume of calls at the moment

Fascinating & grim article on the collapse in S Korea's fertility rate. Cost of parenting seems part of the reason - the amount of tutoring going on is insane. Not sure why S Korea has reached this education competition equilibrium and other countries haven't. worksinprogress.co/issue/two-is...

Idle Q after 16 hours in a&e. Are we good at matching hospital resources to demand? This Chelsea hosp visit has been great, seen quickly, calm atmos, etc. Recent Whipps cross visit people looked close to death in hallways, went home in the end unseen. Is that place variation or time variation?

"City of culture, you'll never sing that" is very good from the Bradford fans (at Leyton)

Today’s labour market stats show a weakening jobs market, with rising unemployment and flatlining real pay. Some @resolutionfoundation.org key takeaways from me and @louisemurphy.bsky.social 🧵 ...

I'm sure sunrise will be great when it happens. Any minute now

Have written a piece teeing up tomorrow's labour market stats, pointing out the sort-of obvious - that we currently have a problem with unemployment (i.e. demand) not just participation (i.e. supply). www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Note to self, drink water before public speaking.. This was otherwise a great event though, interesting to learn more about why a similar experiment in NZ failed (employers weren't bought in, system didn't get going, new party scrapped it).

Looking forward to this event on Thursday. Creating a collective bargaining institution in social care from scratch is a big deal - nothing similar in the UK on this scale since wages councils dismantled 30 years ago. ps I now look older & more tired than in the photo below aka more chair-worthy

Pushing the coffee machine button before getting a mug out of the cupboard. It feels good to be alive

Politicians won't be delighted at this new concept of resigning to take responsibility for something having gone wrong. Glad RF were among those offering support.

Weird that someone was speculatively pinging the OBR url all morning

Glad Govt have made this change. 2 yrs to 6 months is still a HUGE improvement (6m workers will benefit). But this strikes a better balance btw protecting workers and encouraging hiring. It's how most rich countries operate Argued in favour of this here www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Most important fiscal transfer news of the week: RF are losing @adamcorlett.bsky.social to DWP for a year. Wish him well but also:

March will be odd - OBR will publish a forecast but won't assess fiscal rules. Leaving RF / IFS / others to calculate A - B? We can be blunter than the OBR about the various fictions/risks, so probably good there's more headroom ..

Net migration is back at normal levels. ~200k in the year to June 25. And that's without the additional rule changes Labour have already brought in (which are reducing visa numbers but not yet in this data) or plan to bring in. ukandeu.ac.uk/the-coming-c... Widely predicted but still striking.

Was going to post something about how that Economist article surely overstated the 'revolution' on the evidence re minimum wage effects but Andrea does the job very well here

Even after the mansion tax is applied, the owner of a £5m home in Westminster will pay proportionately less in property tax than the owner of a £210k Band B property in Sunderland.

ICYMI given today's focus on the budget: the UK government has today also published a working paper on options for reform of non-compete agreements. Responses to the specific options set out therein (statutory limits, size cutoffs and an outright ban), can be submitted until 18 February. 1/2

It also surely doesn't 'incentivise' having children. Child-related benefits don't cover all the costs of having children!

Feeling very sorry for everyone at OBR. What a miserable thing to happen after months of work

Take a budget break and enjoy one of my favourite ever photos: of my twined aunt and uncle. (Wales ~1960).

The 2026 minimum wage rates have been announced: NLW: £12.21➡️£12.71. (+4.1%) 18-20-yo rate: £10➡️£10.85. (+8.5%) 16-17-yo rate: £7.55➡️£8.00. (+6%) Some context & thoughts on those uprating decisions:

The 2026 minimum wage rates have been announced: NLW: £12.21➡️£12.71. (+4.1%) 18-20-yo rate: £10➡️£10.85. (+8.5%) 16-17-yo rate: £7.55➡️£8.00. (+6%) Some context & thoughts on those uprating decisions:

RF are pro MW, but we agree it's 2nd order to benefits in tackling poverty. Big fight with Osborne over that re tax credit cuts in 2015. One example: a 2-earner 3-kid family on MW wld have been *worse* off in 2024 than 2014 despite real earnings up 27% www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

RIP Jimmy Cliff ! Pretty cool putting one of the all time great ballads on a reggae album

This is a very Patrick Nice from the fast show. He even looks like him www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Even putting aside the problem of accompanying devolution with cuts, the arguments in favour of devolved CTB don't seem very strong. It's not really a mirror to council tax being devolved - councils choose the level of CT but have very little choice about the structure.

Took my almost-2-year-old son to watch the women's north London derby yesterday. Nil-nil wasn't the result we wanted but pleased to make it to 70 minutes (via a croissant, chips, a banana and an animal book).

Agree shouldn't assume that statically regressive policy = bad. Can justify if strong case for positive dynamic effects. But these critiques often over claim in the other direction, that statically regressive = good dynamically. Need to argue for that. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Apparently we won some think tank awards last night for our stats and our puns. Sounds about right

Today’s labour market statistics show that the labour market is weakening on multiple fronts, with unemployment reaching 5 per cent for the first time in almost a decade (pandemic period aside). Here’s our @resolutionfoundation.org thread, from @nyecominetti.bsky.social and me.

A surprisingly bad set of labour market stats this morning. The story I was prepared for was "some weakening, but the shake out from the early part of the year is behind us". But it's worse than that - payroll jobs falling again, unemployment now up at 5%. Here is our PN

From last week. Climbing is fun! (This isn't a hard route but was hard for me)

Had "Employment stats in the morning" going round my head to the tune of "You're getting sacked in the morning" all the way down Victoria embankment