EditorFALLING BEHIND: Wales’s jobs gap with the rest of the UK has widened again — and wages are lagging too, new research finds
Wales has fallen further behind the rest of the UK on jobs, pay and living standards, according to a major new independent report published today — with the employment gap that narrowed during the 2000s and 2010s now wider than at any point since before the last financial crisis.
The findings come from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, one of the UK’s leading independent economic research organisations, in a briefing paper published as part of a series specifically examining the Welsh economy ahead of next month’s Senedd election.
The headline finding is stark. Wales’s employment rate for 16 to 64-year-olds stands at around 71%, compared to 75% in the rest of the UK — a gap of approximately four percentage points. That gap had been narrowed significantly in the decade leading up to the pandemic, falling to around two percentage points in the second half of the 2010s. But Wales’s employment rate fell more sharply after Covid-19 than the rest of the UK, and has not recovered at the same pace, reopening the divide.
As Swansea Bay News has previously reported, Wales already has the lowest employment rate of any UK nation and the highest economic inactivity rate in Great Britain — with nearly one in four working-age adults not in work and not looking for a job. The IFS findings add independent academic weight to a trend already visible in national statistics.
On pay, the picture is similarly challenging. Welsh workers earned a median monthly wage of £2,401 in 2025 — around 5% below the UK median. That gap has narrowed only marginally over the past decade, from just over 6% in 2015. The mean pay gap is even wider at 16%, reflecting the fact that Wales has relatively few high earners, both because of the shape of its economy and because Welsh employers tend to host fewer of the highest-paid roles within any given sector.
The pay divide between Wales and the rest of the UK is almost twice as large in the private sector as in the public sector. That imbalance has a striking consequence: public sector workers in Wales out-earn private sector workers of the same age, sex, education and experience — the reverse of the pattern seen across England as a whole.
Those lower wages, combined with lower employment, feed directly into household incomes. Median household net incomes in Wales are nearly 6% lower than the UK average. The gap is present across the entire income distribution but is largest at the top — 4% lower at the tenth percentile, widening to 13% lower at the ninetieth. Lower housing costs in Wales provide only partial relief, according to the IFS.
Jed Michael, one of the report’s authors and a research economist at the IFS, said the data presented a clear challenge for whoever forms the next Welsh Government. “After catching up during the first two decades of the 21st century, more recent data suggest Wales’s employment rate has fallen behind the rest of the UK,” he said. “When combined with lower earnings, this lower employment rate means both lower average household incomes and a slightly higher poverty rate than the UK as a whole — despite lower housing costs.”
Michael added that the structure of Welsh devolution limited the tools available to address poverty directly. “The Welsh Government has limited control over benefits, which are generally the most direct way to boost the income of low-income households,” he said, pointing to employment, productivity and earnings as the levers that must be pulled instead.
The report also notes that improving the employment picture would not only raise living standards but directly benefit the Welsh Government’s own finances — through higher devolved income tax revenues and lower spending on devolved benefits such as the council tax reduction scheme.
The findings landed immediately in the election campaign. Samuel Kurtz MS, Welsh Conservative Shadow Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, said the report confirmed “what people across Wales already feel.” He said: “Fewer people in work, lower wages, and living standards lagging behind the rest of the UK. The Welsh Conservatives have a clear and credible plan to get Wales working — cutting taxes, backing businesses, and creating the conditions for higher wages and more jobs.”
The IFS report is the fourth in a series of Welsh election briefings funded by the Nuffield Foundation. It does not attribute blame for the trends it identifies to any particular party or government, focusing instead on the data and its implications for future policy.
The employment picture is particularly relevant to communities across South West Wales. Swansea has recorded the weakest payroll performance of any Welsh city region in recent months, with a net loss of more than 1,300 jobs on payroll in the year to January 2026. That places the city at the bottom of a league table of Welsh regions at a time when the national picture is already challenging.
The picture in Swansea is not entirely bleak, however, and the IFS data captures trends at a regional level that don’t always reflect the grain of individual investment decisions. A significant wave of business activity has been reported in the city in recent months. Amazon-owned tech firm Veeqo has opened its new headquarters at the 71/72 Kingsway development, where global workspace operator IWG has also taken 20,000 square feet — part of a Kingsway scheme that has attracted its first wave of tenants and formally opened in recent weeks, with a further office development now under way at the former St David’s site. Amazon itself has pointed to £2.4 billion in Welsh investment with Swansea at its centre.
Beyond the office sector, retailers including Skechers and Boyes have arrived in the city, Greggs has opened a larger city centre shop as part of the ongoing regeneration programme, and a Penllergaer distribution warehouse — approved by Swansea Council’s planning committee this week — is expected to create around 250 jobs when operational. Homegrown businesses are also making their mark: a Swansea firm recently secured £8 million to develop deep-sea wind power technology, Swansea Building Society has expanded its branch network and launched a new app on the back of strong demand, and a women-led city brewery has been celebrating growth. Travis Perkins has relocated its Swansea branch to a larger site in Llansamlet, creating new jobs in the process.
The IFS report itself acknowledges that improving the employment and earnings picture is a long-term structural challenge, not one that turns on any single investment or announcement. For people in Swansea and across South West Wales, the question the data poses is whether the visible signs of regeneration and investment are translating into better-paid, more secure work — and the IFS findings suggest that on the numbers currently available, the answer is not yet a clear yes.
The IFS’s analysis is based on a range of official data sources including the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings and the Family Resources Survey, with the authors noting that well-documented problems with UK labour market data mean the precise employment figures should be treated with some caution, even as the broader trend is clear across multiple datasets.
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The national statistics that set the backdrop to today’s IFS findings — Wales already had the worst employment rate of any UK nation.
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The local dimension to the national picture — Swansea sitting at the bottom of the Welsh jobs league table.
Amazon says £2.4bn investment has boosted Wales — with Swansea at the centre
The investment case being made for Swansea — and the question of whether it’s closing the gap the IFS has identified.
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The election context in which today’s IFS report lands — and what the economic picture means for voters on May 7.
