Good Work builds resilience against social, economic and health shocks. More than any other single factor, access to good jobs will determine future prospects for people and places across the country.
The 2024 Good Work Time Series tracks trends in access to good work across all local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales. This unique view over time is designed to help policymakers identify the most effective ways to improve social, economic and health outcomes together, enabling policy interventions tailored to local challenges.
This year, our analysis shows that the trends and trajectories we identified in 2023 are becoming entrenched, with widening gaps between top and bottom performers and differences between local areas becoming more pronounced.
Increasing job polarisation, combined with significant reductions in total scores seen in parts of the East Midlands and North East, should cause policymakers to reflect on the efficacy of current interventions aimed at addressing pronounced regional inequalities.
On the upside, many components of the Good Work Monitor are still interacting positively, despite a drop in median pay, reinforcing the case for a new economic paradigm of good work. This offers offer fresh impetus to develop an industrial strategy in which the creation and protection of good work is recognised as a policy priority across different tiers of government and stages of the technology life cycle.
Citation
Papagiannaki, E., Clarke, J., Thomas, A., & Brewin, K. (2024). The Good Work Time Series 2024. Institute for the Future of Work
