There remains a puzzle around the world over why wage growth is so benign given the unemployment rate has returned to pre-recession levels. It is our contention that a considerable part of the explanation is the rise in underemployment which rose in the Great Recession but has not returned to...

Large numbers of part-time workers around the world, both those who choose to be part-time and those who are there involuntarily and would prefer a full-time job report they want more hours. Full-timers who say they want to change their hours mostly say they want to reduce them. When recession...

We examine well-being in Scotland using micro data from the Scottish Health Survey and the UK Annual Population Surveys. We find evidence of a midlife low in Scotland in well-being at around age fifty using a variety of measures of both happiness and unhappiness. We confirm that higher...

In this paper we build on our earlier work on underemployment using data from the UK. In particular, we explore their well-being based on hours preferences rather than on involuntary part-time work used in the prior literature. We make use of five main measures of well-being: happiness; life...

In the UK we construct the Bell/Blanchflower underemployment index based on reports of whether workers, including full-timers and those who want to be part-time, who say they want to increase or decrease their hours at the going wage rate. If they want to change their hours they report by how...

One of the main puzzles associated with the Great Recession has been the muted increase in recorded unemployment in the UK. In this paper we explore possible explanations for the behaviour of the UK labour market during the period of the recession. We establish that there has been significant...

Large numbers of part-time workers around the world, both those who choose to be part-time and those who are there involuntarily and would prefer a full-time job report they want more hours. Full-timers who say they want to change their hours mostly say they want to reduce them. When recession...

In this paper we build on our earlier work on underemployment using data from the UK. In particular, we explore their well-being based on hours preferences rather than on involuntary part-time work used in the prior literature. We make use of five main measures of well-being: happiness; life...