Monday 20 February 2017

No country for young men?

a blog post for the Resolution Foundation by Daniel Tomlinson

In decades gone by paid work was a thing that men did. Families, the world of work and the welfare state were structured to make this the norm. But this mid-20th century certainty is no more. Women in the UK are participating in the labour market in ever greater numbers with the gender employment gap now at a record low. This is good news.

But rising female participation hasn’t been the only big labour market shift over the last 50 years. There has been a massive upheaval in the nature of work carried out too. The classic mid-skilled jobs of the past – secretarial and routine manufacturing jobs – are in long-term decline and won’t be coming back (no matter what President Trump says). This has huge consequences for the career prospects of younger generations (a key theme of our Intergenerational Commission) but also for how different genders experience the world of work.

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