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

Asked a guy on the bus to turn off his phone noise and he... did! Society is not lost

Don't envy the person writing the productivity down, wages up bit of the EFO

Found this piece about minimum wage catching up with entry level grad pay a bit odd. www.ft.com/content/b436... 1. Re min wage reducing incentive to go to uni. Yes at the margin, but I struggle to believe this can be a big effect? Going to uni raises lifetime earnings, not just at age 25.

Presumably Wales spared from this list due to the dragon protecting the hobbits

The Govt plans to make unfair dismissal protection a 'day one' right. I think it should keep qualifying periods but reduce to 3-6 months. Would keep most of the benefit of the Govt's plans but come with lower risk to hiring. I wrote about that here www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

Why do people *not* respond to the Labour Force Survey? For a while the biggest problem was thought to be failure to make contact with the sampled households. New data suggests by far the bigger problem - arguably more worrying - is people knowing they've been invited but refusing to take part.

New Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings data out this morning (data collected from an employer survey in April 2025). www.ons.gov.uk/releases/emp... Quick thread on main things I have taken from the data

Pretty chilling seeing this as a timelapse infographic/map www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/trans...

New ASHE data out. www.ons.gov.uk/releases/emp... From a quick look I think the new data doesn't change the outlook for the NLW (unlike last year, when a revision led to a bigger uprating). Relief for LPC. Basically no revision to the 2024 data, and 2025 growth in line with LPC expectations.

This made the radio 4 bulletin. So i think it's .. real 😮

£180k to tutor a one year old. Either a well written joke or something pretty astounding www.tes.com/jobs/vacancy...

Really saddened by this. Loved watching him www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/o...

Went to see Elis and John tonight and after about 8 years of listening it did feel significant