Young Britons are staying in jobs for longer

BRITAIN’S LABOUR market is tight. The unemployment rate of 3.8% is the lowest in decades; 76.3% of working-age Britons have jobs, a record high. Good news, you might suppose, for anyone on the lookout for a better job. In the labour market, loyalty does not pay: shifting jobs tends to be a good way of getting a salary boost. In 2017 the average pay rise for a worker staying with the same employer was just 1.1% after inflation compared with 5.4% for someone making a change.

You might also expect supposedly flighty 20-somethings to be eager movers. Yet younger workers remain more wedded to their current jobs than they were before the financial crisis of 2007-09. There is a similar trend in other rich countries, but it is particularly pronounced in Britain. Young Britons’ reluctance to move may be part of the explanation for their dismal wage-growth. In the five years after the crash, they experienced a larger cut in real wages than their older colleagues.