Before the start of the Second World War, the UK had experienced two decades of high unemployment. For Beveridge writing in 1942, the Giant of “Idleness” was primarily about worklessness and a lack of jobs for the male breadwinner. Today's labour market is very different. Far fewer people are unemployed, the number of women in paid work has increased dramatically, but in-work poverty is rising and increasing numbers of people face new forms of insecurity in work. Today's problem is not a lack of work, but a lack of quality work with a good level of pay.

Although the mantra that “work is the best way out of poverty” remains firmly entrenched in parts of the political psyche, the reality is that the UK has become stuck in a low-pay lowproductivity rut. Rising in-work poverty, low productivity levels, falling rates of progression and increasing “precaritization” of the workforce increasingly call this into question. Tackling un- and underemployment in a post-Brexit, post-pandemic UK necessitates a substantial shift in our understanding of the problem and our response to it. This is crucial if ambitions to “build back better” are to be realized. In this book, we show why quality of work is the most pressing labour market issue facing the UK today, and what must be done to solve it.

Underlying all of these issues is the question of power in the labour market. In the past, this discussion has focused on unionization and collective bargaining, which undoubtedly improves outcomes for workers. But there is a more subtle way in which worker power needs to be considered. By and large, for people who are unemployed or on a low income, power is in short supply. The way the state engages with people out of work, through coercive active labour market policies, a lack of concern for skills and career progression and a one-size-fits-all approach to out-of-work support that ignores the needs of lone parents, disabled people and others, exacerbates this problem.

The degradation of social infrastructure – declining local bus services, childcare services that don't meet the shift patterns of low-paid workers – conspire to create barriers to work, especially for women. If you need to be at the school gate by 3.15pm, the pool of potential jobs shrinks very quickly. As we show, childcare and transport are not only social policy issues but fundamental to tackling low-pay low-productivity Britain.