Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?

by David G. Blanchflower

The onset of austerity has made matters worse. A recent paper by Thiemo Fetzer (2018) concluded that the onset of austerity in the UK in 2010 directly contributed to the Brexit vote. His findings suggest that the EU referendum could well have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for a range of austerity-induced welfare reforms. These reforms, Fetzer suggests, “activated existing economic grievances” (2018, 1). Further, he finds that the rise of popular support for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) is the single most important correlate of the subsequent Leave vote in the 2016 EU referendum; this along with broader measures of political dissatisfaction are strongly and causally associated with an individual’s or an area’s exposure to austerity since 2010.