Tag Archives: Employment and Labour Market

The Social Market Foundation's response to the Summer Budget 2015. Here we look at the OBR's update to see whether the Chancellor's spending plans are on track, we examine the Living Wage announcement and see if this conflicts with changes to tax credits, we look into the changes to Higher Education funding and apprenticeships, and the government's green paper on pension and savings tax relief.

The government’s pledge to create three million new apprenticeships in the next five years, and also ensure they deliver the scientific and technical skills UK businesses needed to increase productivity, is ‘doomed’ to fail without major changes warns government skills adviser Professor Baroness Alison Wolf, in a report published today (2 July) by the Social Market Foundation (SMF).

The SMF respond to Budget 2015 by saying that while Osborne's Budget didn’t contain the expected pre-election giveaways, it was most certainly aimed at the voting public.

A new SMF report warns that the declining financial position of younger workers and those on low incomes puts a limit on the UK economy’s ability to depend on consumer spending for growth.

This is an intensely political Autumn Statement with an economic argument behind it. The future course of deficit reduction is specifically designed in order to underline the Conservatives’ long term...

In the lead up to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, SMF's new briefing reveals the scale of the deficit waiting for the next Government with entirely new numbers.

The government must remove the barriers holding back potential entrepreneurs from starting the high-value, growth boosting companies which are key to unlocking UK productivity, says a new study by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) think tank.

Advancing the skills of low-paid workers is essential if the UK is to make work pay and remain globally competitive says the Social Market Foundation (SMF) in its new report, Making Progress: Boosting the skills and wage prospects of the low paid, released on Monday 28 April 2014.

The Social Market Foundation's response to the 2014 Budget statement.