Research and analysis

Low Pay Commission research 2019

Research commissioned to inform the Low Pay Commission's work and recommendations in 2019.

• From: Low Pay Commission
• Published: 18 December 2019
• Last updated: 21 April 2020 — See all updates

Documents

The impact of minimum wage upratings on wage growth and the wage distribution

PDF, 1.34 MB, 37 pages

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The NMW/NLW and progression out of minimum wage jobs in the UK

PDF, 2.53 MB, 56 pages

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The impact of the minimum wage on employment and hours

PDF, 4.56 MB, 173 pages

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The impact of the NLW on businesses: retail and hospitality in two English cities

PDF, 1.37 MB, 49 pages

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The impact of the NLW on businesses: evidence from new survey and linked datasets

PDF, 1.61 MB, 50 pages

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Productivity bounce or squeeze: employer responses to the National Living Wage

PDF, 626 KB, 41 pages

Details

We are today publishing reports from four research projects commissioned by the Low Pay Commission in 2019. These pieces investigate the effects of the National Living Wage (NLW) on a range of outcomes and areas and helped inform our recommendations to Government.

• The two reports by Silvia Avram and Susan Harkness consider the impact of the minimum wage on wage growth and the wage distribution, and progression out of minimum wage jobs.

• The project by the Institute for Employment Studies uses data from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) and Labour Force Survey (LFS) to look at the NLW’s overall impact on employment and hours.

• The project by the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Decent Work examines the NLW’s impact on retail and hospitality businesses in Sheffield and Greater Manchester through a survey of and interviews with business owners and managers.

We have now published an additional report from a joint project involving the Cass Business School, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR). This investigates the NLW’s impact on business by matching information from the CIPD’s Labour Market Outlook (LMO) employer surveys to company accounts data from Financial Analysis Made Easy. This linked dataset uses organisations’ direct reports about their exposure to the NLW, provided in the LMO surveys, to examine the comparative performance of NLW-exposed and non-exposed firms over a number of years.

We have also published another piece of research from the CIPD, summarising surveys of employers in 2015, 2018 and 2019 and including case studies of employer responses to the rising NLW.

In November, we published reports from two other research projects commissioned in 2019, which informed our review of the youth rates of the National Minimum Wage.

Published 18 December 2019
Last updated 21 April 2020 + show all updates

1. 21 April 2020

   Publication of an additional report, 'Productivity bounce or squeeze: employer responses to the National Living Wage' by the CIPD.

2. 18 March 2020

   This page has been updated to include the final report from the research project by the Cass Business School, NIESR and the CIPD.

3. 18 December 2019

   First published.