Unless you move to a foreign country, having to learn another language seems an unusual requirement for a job in a firm that specialises in delivering takeaways. But managers at gig-economy…Read more…
Masking sickness at work?
Fear for their jobs has prompted British workers to take the fewest number of sick days since records began – only 137m working days last year were lost to sickness, equivalent to just over four days…Read more…
#Budget2017: Self-employment tax changes
Increases in taxation of self-employment may raise more money for the exchequer but will do little to clamp down on bad employers who force staff into bogus self-employment to lower their tax bill Today’s standout Budget measure was the increase in the tax paid by the self-employed, with the rate…Read more…
Am I really self-employed?
The company I work for have told me I am classed as self-employed and therefore have to pay my own tax and don’t get any holidays. I’ve read quite a bit about bogus self-employment recently. How do I…Read more…
Insecure work wastes billions
Insecure work is costing the government almost £4bn per year, a damning new report has found. The costs equate to a loss for £75m a week for the Treasury – enough to pay for a quarter of the…Read more…
Self-employment – who are the new army of workers?
The rise in self – employment is well documented, the surge is extraordinary as self-employment is a relatively small part of the UK jobs market. More striking is that whilst women account for just under a third of all the self- employed, they have made up over half (53 per cent) of the increase…Read more…
Hiding behind ‘self-employed’ shield
Exploitative companies that use large numbers of agency or self-employed staff to avoid employment protections and taxes will be targeted by a new HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) unit. The…Read more…
What’s up with self-employment?
Last week I was perusing the latest Business; activity, size and location statistics on the ONS website (which counts as a good time in your 30s) when I noticed an interesting quirk: the number of private sector businesses continues to grow but the num…Read more…
‘Not all budding entrepreneurs’
Nearly 90 percent of jobs created in the past three months have been in self-employed roles, prompting warnings over the spread of low-paid insecure work throughout Britain. In the most recent…Read more…
What should we make of today’s employment figures?
Today’s employment figures tell us a story we’ve grown used to – employment is still growing, unemployment is coming down at a slower rate, wage growth is still slow and there are other signs that the labour market isn’t as strong as we’d ideally like. As Damian Green was quick to point out, the…Read more…
Making self-employed lives liveable
Last week the RSA published a new report looking at the living standards of the self-employed. Why did we undertake this study? Simple: Because the self-employed community is booming but government, business and wider society have yet to catch up. In recent years, we’ve seen plenty of initiatives…Read more…