IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/28758.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The UK labour market and the 2008 - 2009 recession

Author

Listed:
  • Gregg, Paul
  • Wadsworth, Jonathan

Abstract

The recession of 2008-2009 inflicted a larger cumulative loss of UK output than any of the other post-war recessions. Nevertheless, employment rates remained higher than might have been expected given the experience of previous recessions. The main reasons for this appear to be a combination of high firm profitability levels going into the recession, supportive monetary and fiscal policies during the recession, reductions in real producer wages and relatively buoyant real consumer wages. Unemployment had reached its lowest levels for thirty years going in to the latest recession and has also remained relatively subdued through the downturn, certainly compared to previous recessions. A combination of lower inflow rates into unemployment, allied with a relatively higher outflow rate into employment, underlie this. As government support for the economy is scaled back and productivity growth remains low, it may be that it will take a long time for employment to return to levels last seen before the recession.

Suggested Citation

  • Gregg, Paul & Wadsworth, Jonathan, 2010. "The UK labour market and the 2008 - 2009 recession," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 28758, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:28758
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28758/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Geroski,Paul A. & Gregg,Paul, 1997. "Coping with Recession," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521622769.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead (ed.), 2011. "Work Inequalities in the Crisis," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14602.
    2. Andrew Sutton, 2013. "On the determinants of UK unemployment and the Great Recession: analysing the gross flows data," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(25), pages 3599-3616, September.
    3. Marco Percoco, 2016. "Labour Market Institutions: Sensitivity to the Cycle and Impact of the Crisis in European Regions," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 107(3), pages 375-385, July.
    4. Damian Grimshaw & Anthony Rafferty, 2011. "Social Impact of the Crisis in the United Kingdom: Focus on Gender and Age Inequalities," Chapters, in: Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead (ed.), Work Inequalities in the Crisis, chapter 13, Edward Elgar Publishing.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. José Eduardo Gómez González & Ines Paola Orozco Hinojosa, 2010. "Un modelo de alerta temprana para el sistema financiero colombiano," Revista ESPE - Ensayos sobre Política Económica, Banco de la Republica de Colombia, vol. 28(62), pages 124-147, June.
    2. Knudsen, Eirik Sjåholm, 2019. "Bad weather ahead: Pre-recession characteristics and the severity of recession impact," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 118-130.
    3. Dionisius Narjoko & Hal Hill, 2007. "Winners and Losers during a Deep Economic Crisis: Firm‐level Evidence from Indonesian Manufacturing," Asian Economic Journal, East Asian Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 343-368, December.
    4. António Menezes & José Vieira, 2008. "Training, Job Upgrading, Job Creation and Job Destruction," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 36(3), pages 275-292, September.
    5. Bamiatzi, Vassiliki & Cavusgil, Salih Tamer & Jabbour, Liza & Sinkovics, Rudolf R., 2014. "Does business group affiliation help firms achieve superior performance during industrial downturns? An empirical examination," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 195-211.
    6. Gwénaëlle Flandrin-Le Maire, 2003. "L'impact macroéconomique de la norme IAS 39," Revue d'Économie Financière, Programme National Persée, vol. 71(2), pages 123-138.
    7. Marianna SUCCURRO & Lidia MANNARINO, 2014. "The Impact Of Financial Structure On Firms’ Probability Of Bankruptcy: A Comparison Across Western Europe Convergence Regions," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 14(1), pages 81-94.
    8. Haynes, Michelle & Thompson, Steve & Wright, Mike, 2003. "The determinants of corporate divestment: evidence from a panel of UK firms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 147-166, September.
    9. Conti, Claudio Ramos & Goldszmidt, Rafael & Vasconcelos, Flávio Carvalho de, 2020. "Firm characteristics and capabilities that enable superior performance in recessions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 553-561.
    10. Geoff Mason & Kate Bishop, 2015. "The Impact of Recession on Adult Training: Evidence from the United Kingdom in 2008–2009," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 53(4), pages 736-759, December.
    11. Haynes, Michelle & Thompson, Steve & Wright, Mike, 2000. "The determinants of corporate divestment in the UK," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(8), pages 1201-1222, December.
    12. David Bailey & Nigel Berkeley, 2014. "Regional Responses to Recession: The Role of the West Midlands Regional Taskforce," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(11), pages 1797-1812, November.
    13. Iman Cheratian & Saleh Goltabar & Mohammad Reza Farzanegan, 2022. "Survival Strategies Under Sanctions: Firm-Level Evidence from Iran," Working Papers 1569, Economic Research Forum, revised 20 Aug 2022.
    14. Paz Rico Belda & Bernardí Cabrer-Borrás, 2021. "Size and survival of the hospitality industry: The case of Spain," Tourism Economics, , vol. 27(5), pages 933-951, August.
    15. M. Tudela & G. Young, 2005. "A Merton-Model Approach To Assessing The Default Risk Of Uk Public Companies," International Journal of Theoretical and Applied Finance (IJTAF), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 8(06), pages 737-761.
    16. P. Geroski, 1998. "An Applied Econometrician's View of Large Company Performance," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 13(3), pages 271-294, June.
    17. Vassiliki Bamiatzi & Konstantinos Bozos & S. Tamer Cavusgil & G. Tomas M. Hult, 2016. "Revisiting the firm, industry, and country effects on profitability under recessionary and expansion periods: A multilevel analysis," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(7), pages 1448-1471, July.
    18. Georges Dionne & Sadok Laajimi & Sofiane Mejri & Madalina Petrescu, 2006. "Estimation of the Default Risk of Publicly Traded Canadian Companies," Cahiers de recherche 0613, CIRPEE.
    19. Conti, Claudio Ramos & Goldszmidt, Rafael & Vasconcelos, Flávio Carvalho de, 2015. "Estratégias para desempenho superior em recessões: pro ou contra-cíclicas?," RAE - Revista de Administração de Empresas, FGV-EAESP Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo (Brazil), vol. 55(3), May.
    20. Lidia Mannarino & Marianna Succurro, 2013. "The Impact Of Financial Structure On Firms’ Probability Of Bankruptcy: A Comparison Across Western Europe Convergence Regions," Working Papers 201305, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:28758. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.