Five years ago, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson made "levelling up" a central plank of the Conservative Party's bid for re-election, with a manifesto pledge to "level up every part of the UK". In 2022, the government published a thorough and ambitious White Paper setting out 12 levelling up...

It has been a tough few years for labour market statistics. The COVID-19 pandemic made the collection and interpretation of data on jobs and pay extremely challenging. Many surveys found it harder to reach respondents. Those that relied on face-to-face interviewing had to switch to telephone or...