The decline of paid overtime working in Britain

The share of paid‐for overtime hours within total paid‐for hours worked in Britain has declined from 5.4% to 2.0% between 1997 and 2020. We investigate this decline, focussing on its distribution across full‐time (f/t) and part‐time males and females and across 19 one‐digit industries. It is established that f/t males are dominant in the decline both of overtime working and overtime hours. We explore the implications of the decline on the share of overtime pay within total pay as well as on the gender pay gap. We test for economic, structural and cyclical influences on overtime working via a two‐part regression model that allows us to differentiate between the incidence of overtime working and weekly overtime hours of overtime employees. We examine how paid‐for overtime has varied with collective bargaining coverage, low pay, the 2008 financial crisis, the arrival of Covid‐19, job mobility and the public/private sector dichotomy. Combined marginal effects of changes in the incidence of overtime working and weekly overtime hours are also provided. The influence of the decline of collective bargaining in the last two decades on overtime working is highlighted using Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions.

The U-shape of Happiness in Scotland

We examine well-being in Scotland using micro data from the Scottish Health Survey and the UK Annual Population Surveys. We find evidence of a midlife low in Scotland in well-being at around age fifty using a variety of measures of both happiness and unhappiness. We confirm that higher consumption of fruit and vegetables is associated with higher levels of happiness in Scotland. We compare this with evidence for England from the Health Survey of England. The decline in well-being between youth and midlife is comparable in size to the loss of a spouse or of a job and around half of the fall in well-being in the COVID-19 lockdown. We also find a mid-life peak in suicides in Scotland. Despite higher mortality and suicide rates in Scotland than in England, paradoxically we find that the Scots are happier than the English. Northern Ireland is the happiest of the four home countries. We also find evidence of U-shapes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the mid to late forties.

The U-shape of Happiness in Scotland

Abstract We examine well-being in Scotland using micro data from the Scottish Health Survey and the UK Annual Population Surveys. We find evidence of a midlife nadir or zenith in Scotland in well-being at around age fifty using a variety of measures of both happiness and unhappiness. We confirm that higher consumption of fruit and vegetables is associated with higher levels of happiness in Scotland. We compare this with evidence for England from the Health Survey of England. The decline in well-being between youth and midlife is comparable in size to the loss of a spouse or of a job and around half of the fall in well-being in the COVID-19 lockdown. We also find a mid-life peak in suicides in Scotland. Despite higher mortality and suicide rates in Scotland than in England, paradoxically we find that the Scots are happier than the English. Northern Ireland is the happiest of the four home countries. We also find evidence of U-shapes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in the mid to late forties.

US AND UK LABOUR MARKETS BEFORE AND DURING THE COVID-19 CRASH

We examine labour market performance in the US and the UK prior to the onset of the Covid-19 crash. We then track the changes that have occurred in the months and days from the beginning of March 2020 using what we call the Economics of Walking About (EWA) that shows a collapse twenty times faster and much deeper than the Great Recession. We examine unemployment insurance claims by state by day in the US as well as weekly national data. We track the distributional impact of the shock and show that already it is hitting the most vulnerable groups who are least able to work from home the hardest – the young, the least educated and minorities. We have no official labour market data for the UK past January but see evidence that job placements have fallen sharply. We report findings from an online poll fielded from 11–16 April 2020 showing that a third of workers in Canada and the US report that they have lost at least half of their income due to the Covid-19 crisis, compared with a quarter in the UK and 45 per cent in China. We estimate that the unemployment rate in the US is around 20 per cent in April. It is hard to know what it is in the UK given the paucity of data, but it has gone up a lot.