Blog

As we reach the half way point of 2024, join us in reflecting on the WED project’s successes so far.

The WED Community

• This year we welcomed Carl Singleton back onto the team. Carl is Senior Lecturer of Economics at the University of Stirling, and an IZA Research Fellow. Carl has worked on the project in the past, and we are thrilled to have such a knowledgeable and experienced labour economist back on the team.
• The wider community of WED data users is set to expand, with the ASHE-Census; ASHE-PAYE; and ASHE-Self Assessment datasets being made available as flagship datasets in the ADR UK funded research fellowship call. We look forward to seeing these projects commencing over the coming months.
• We have seen two publications from current ASHE-Census users:
  • Discussion paper:  Labour Market Performance of Immigrants: New Evidence from Linked Administrative Data, ADR UK Research Fellow Ezgi Kaya
  • Working paper: Social Skills and the Individual Wage Growth of Less Educated Workers, Philippe Aghion, Antonin Bergeaud, Richard Blundell, Rachel Griffith (Institute for Fiscal Studies)
• The WED Knowledge Hub went live. This is a platform for researchers to ask questions of each other regarding ASHE datasets or analysis using ASHE data. 

Research Outputs

• The article “Why wages don’t fall in jobs with incomplete contracts” (Fagnoni, M., Schaefer, D. & Singleton, C., 2024) was accepted by the journal Management Science.
• The working paper “The Impact of a Rising Wage Floor on Labour Mobility across Firms” was completed, ready for submission to a journal, and has been submitted to the IZA Institute of Labour Economics discussion paper series.
• Our work was cited in the Low Pay Commission’s 2023 Report on The National Minimum Wage
• We had a blog published by ADR UK about WED’s newest data linkages, ASHE-PAYE and ASHE-Self Assessment.
• Provided evidence to the select committee on “Transforming the UK’s Evidence Base” 

Presentations

• At the Colloquium on Personnel Economics Conference this year, we presented findings from the paper The impact of a rising wage floor on labour mobility across firms
• At this year’s Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) Conference, the team presented findings from two papers:
  • Revisiting Sample Bias in ASHE –with implications for estimates of low pay
  • Exploring the Value of Green Jobs in England and Wales
• In May we hosted the ADR UK Research Innovation Workshop at UWE, presenting findings from:
  • Low Pay and Labour Mobility
  • Exploring the Value of Green Jobs in England and Wales
• We presented this Value of Green Jobs paper at the Flourishing Regions event, as part of Bristol’s Festival ideas
• We were also accepted by the Work, Pensions and Labour Economics Study Group to produce a special session in July.

Training

• In March, we supported the delivery of an ASHE-Census training event with a focus on practical usage, including reasons for using the data, the contents of the dataset, and information about its construction.

Stakeholder Engagement

• In January, we held our joint Academic and Government Stakeholder Group Meetings
• Around this time, we also organised individual meetings with Public Engagement Strategy Group members to better understand their research needs
• We held a HMRC webinar to provide an overview of project progress, and to discuss research priorities
• We met with HM Treasury and Department for Business and Trade to provide an update on WED project 

New Data Sources

• This year, we got the exciting news that our funding application WED 4- the next stage of the project which links the ASHE to the Census 2021, and refreshes the ASHE-Census 2011 linkage with new methodology- was accepted. This will provide policy and research communities with a powerful longitudinal ASHE-Census dataset

2024 so far has been a promising year characterised by collaboration and excitement for the future. Whilst the team has worked hard behind the scenes on quality assuring the flagship datasets ready to welcome the ADR UK Fellows, the project has continued to expand, and new members have begun contributing valuable research. The team are excited for what lies ahead, and look forward to seeing the innovative research and insights the WED Project community will continue to produce.

For more information on any of the topics here or the work of the WED team leave a comment below, or you can contact us at wagedynamics@uwe.ac.uk.