Report: COVID-19, Brexit and National Living Wage on the Adult Social Care Sector in England

The aim of this report is to examine the impacts of the National Living Wage (NLW) in a low wage sector, the adult social Care (ASC) sector in England, in the recent context dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the introduction of the new trade relationship of the UK with the EU (Brexit). Learn more about the report co-authored by Andreas Georgiadis (Brunel University Lodnon).

Key findings: 

• A key novel finding of this analysis is that estimated NLW effects are heterogeneous, as we find that their sign and size of depend on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic in the locality care homes operate and the extent to which care homes are affected by new immigration rules for EU workforce resulting from Brexit.
• Another new finding of this study is that COVID-19 and Brexit have significant effects on care homes’ outcomes, and they lead to significant decrease employees’ absenteeism and increases in deaths due to COVID-19 at the care home.
• Although, there is some evidence that Brexit may be associated with increasing vacancy rates, we do not find systematic effects of Brexit across retention and recruitment outcomes, or significant wage and employment effects, suggesting significant labour shortages because of Brexit in the sector.
• Finally, we also find evidence that higher ‘bite’ of NLW increases and exposure to Brexit at the care home led to higher deaths due to COVID-19 in the area, which imply spill-over effects of NLW and Brexit to other care homes and settings. Future research should investigate the mechanism underlying these spill-overs.

Read the full report here