Journal Article

Local unemployment changes the springboard effect of low pay: evidence from England

Authors

Publication date

13 Nov 2019

Summary

There is considerable debate on whether the employment and earnings prospects are better for those on low pay or for the unemployed. Low-pay work tends to be undertaken more locally but no empirical analysis has focused on how local opportunities alter prospects. Using Understanding Society data for England matched with local unemployment rates, we estimate dynamic random effects panel models, which show robust evidence that the future unemployment risk is lower for those who are currently on low pay compared to those who are currently unemployed. The low-paid also have a higher chance than the unemployed of becoming higher-paid. These findings are most marked in neighbourhoods with high unemployment.

Published in

PLoS ONE

Volume

14

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0224290

Subjects

Area Effects, Regional Economics, Geography, Labour Market, Unemployment, and Wages And Earnings

Notes

Open Access; © 2019 Plum, Knies.; This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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