Structural changes in UK sectoral labour markets and their macroeconomic implications

This is a preview from the National Institute Economic Review, February 2019, no 247.

The UK labour market has become more interconnected. What are the macroeconomic implications of this trend?

In order to understand trends in aggregate labour market outcomes, such as wage and productivity growth and collective bargaining, it is important to look at sector-level developments and labour dynamics between sectors. In this Box, prepared by NIESR’s Nathaniel Butler-Blondel and Arno Hantzsche, we introduce new measures of cross-sectoral employment flows. We find that a rebalancing towards more productive sectors partly offset a slowdown in productivity growth while average wage dynamics are associated predominantly with sector-specific trends. Sectors that are more connected with other sectors tend to have lower union density.