The UK Labour Market

The behaviour of the labour market is widely seen as the cause of the UK's poor macroeconomic performance from the mid-1960s. The functioning of the labour market is addressed in this book, first published in 1994, by an international group of economists. They assemble micro and macroeconomic evidence on the UK, the US, France and Germany, and discuss whether the UK labour market is different, and also if it has changed over time. The microeconomic evidence is assessed by Blanchflower and Freeman and by Gregg and Machin. The Thatcher reforms to industrial relations, surveyed by Metcalf, appear to have increased inequality without producing a more flexible labour market. Gregory and Sandoval suggest that minimum wages might have helped alleviate the rise in inequality in the UK. The effects of the reforms of the 1980s are unclear. Minford and Riley suggest that they have had an impact, whilst Barrell, Pain and Young present evidence that little has changed. The micro and macroeconomic approaches are complemented by Grubb's detailed survey of the effects of labour market policies as well as by the overview paper by Anderton and Mayhew.