UK Taxpayers Are Paying £50 Billion to Top Up Low-Wage Work
- IFS says higher employment has come at cost of dead-end jobs
- Marginal tax rates on low paid can reach 76%, think tank says
A worker cleans a street in Dalston, London, UK.
Photographer: Jose Sarmento Matos/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Britain has increased employment over the past two decades by moving people into chronically low-paying jobs that offer little career progression and must be topped up with around £50 billion ($62 billion) of in-work benefits, a survey of the UK welfare system has concluded.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies says in a new report that stricter benefit rules since the late 1990s have succeeded in improving work incentives but a vast majority of the new jobs have been part time, paying on average just £8,000 a year - trapping people in dead-end jobs and continuing welfare dependency.