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Alex Bryson - UK labor market

Country labor market predictions: Alex Bryson on the UK labor market.

Okay so, I’m from Britain, so the greatest labor market challenge facing my country is probably, a two-fold one actually.

One, that everybody will expect me to say, which is Brexit, and boy is that true because we rely on international talent to remain globally competitive in Britain. We are still a small nation state, and it’s extremely important that we show that we’re open to business and can attract and retain the best talent in the world.

The second one is perhaps something that people will have less, paid less attention to and that’s this long term stagnation in real wages. It’s been going on for some time, in fact it slightly predates the recession, and this means that there are real problems in the labor market. We do very well on employment and employment rates, but workers are finding it very very difficult, and find, struggle to maintain standards of living when wages have been stagnate for so long.

The government’s been doing a little bit about that, in particular increasing the national minimum wage, but it’s a challenge for all of us to ensure that labor gets its fair share of increasing wealth in the country.

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