How to create new jobs
8 October 2020
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Research
5 October 2020
Publications
9 October 2020
Tax and Fiscal Policy
19 November 2024
https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/How-to-create-new-jobs_web.pdf
Summary
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- Following the Covid-19 lockdown, the UK labour market faces much higher unemployment and reductions in labour force participation as some groups withdraw from the labour market.
- Measures such as the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Self-employment Income Support Scheme served a useful purpose, but governments cannot keep businesses on life support indefinitely. Job protection measures risk substantial harm if they hinder the adjustment of the labour market to changing conditions.
- Direct government interventions to ‘create jobs’ can be costly and are rarely successful in generating multiplier effects.
- The current crisis risks becoming an excuse for the permanent expansion of the state, accompanied by increased taxation, which could damage the recovery and become a long-term constraint on future growth.
- Before the pandemic hit, the UK had been doing well in generating new private sector jobs. Allowing markets for goods and services to operate freely could help to restore and enhance the conditions under which job creation can be maximised.
- Some deregulation of land-use planning has been announced, but the government could also consider liberalising employment law.
- Employment regulation is in effect a tax on jobs, the burden falling largely on workers in terms of reduced pay and employment opportunities rather than on company profits. It often serves sectional interests at the expense of the wider workforce and may be a poorly-targeted way of assisting disadvantaged groups.
- Key elements in boosting economic recovery might include the scrapping of much occupational licensing, the reform of minimum wages, ending the apprenticeship levy and unpicking many other types of employment regulation.
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