A new report by the Government’s Equality Hub examines the labour market outcomes of working age adults (16 to 64 year olds) living in the UK.
The report, commissioned by the Race Disparity Unity in response to the Government’s report Inclusive Britain published in 2022, was authored by Vasileois Antonopoulos working alongside ISER researchers, Professor Renee Luthra and Jonas Kaufmann, as part of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change (MiSoC) Policy Fellowship programme, bringing government researchers into academia to investigate policy issues.
This fellowship scheme is in partnership with the Open Innovation Team, a cross-government unit that works with experts to generate analysis and ideas for policy. The fellowship enables officials to access support using quantitative social science data and analysis to answer a specific policy question. Fellows propose a question they would like to research, and they receive guidance and mentorship from world-leading quantitative social scientists based at MiSoc.
The purpose of this research is to establish the social mobility journey of migrants coming to the UK, and understand how migration status impacts on ethnic disparities in the UK.
Findings include:
- second generation immigrants of some ethnic minority groups perform better than white British people when looking at unemployment and economic inactivity
- some ethnic groups still face disparities in the labour market, with higher likelihoods of being unemployed or economically inactive compared with white British people
Controlling for educational qualifications, health, marital status, geography, difficulties speaking English and being a parent of a child under 16 years old, the research found that:
- education and health are the main factors that affect labour market outcomes
- for men, being single is associated with higher likelihood of unemployment – while for women, having a child is associated with higher likelihood of economic inactivity
- generation is a vital factor that affects labour market outcomes for ethnic minorities
Read the full report here