Our Education & Labour Markets research examines how urban educational systems and environments shape attainment, skills development and labour market experiences and how the job market and the nature of work are evolving across urban areas.

The first area extends UBDC’s existing work on educational disadvantage and place, examining more broadly how urban educational systems shape attainment, skills development and productivity into employment. We will also continue to examine how home and educational environments combine within an urban setting to shape educational attainment.

We will produce new knowledge on attainment gaps and key transitions in school, FE and HE student attainment and skilled employment using data for widespread applications within educational policy at national and local levels. We will also develop more robust indicators for Learning Cities, enabling more rigorous comparisons of cities. At the core of our work here is a novel data collection linking administrative data from school, FE and HE systems.

We will also explore how digital footprints data can provide more timely and granular insights into changes in urban labour markets. In the post-pandemic era, key themes will include shifts in the geography of employment, including changes in the role of city centres, as well as moves towards flexible forms of working, including home working.

Theme lead

Professor Catherine Lido

Learn more about our work on Education & Labour Markets by exploring the research projects below.