Manufacturing as a false panacea for regional income inequality

Abstract

The UK Government’s Levelling Up White Paper (HM Government, 2022) provides an analysis of the socioeconomic disparities across the UK. One of the four key prongs to their approach to reduce socioeconomic disparities is to boost productivity through the private sector, particularly in manufacturing. It acknowledges that better employment and higher incomes are necessary particularly across the north of England due to lower performance in median pay if the country is to find itself on better footing for a stable future in order to see ‘the gap between the top performing and other areas closing’ (p. ii). However, the narrow focus on improving productivity to achieve this through job creation and higher incomes is teleological, ignoring wider structural issues that lead to ‘bad work’ and further entrench inequalities. This article challenges the White Paper’s claims of a clear and positive causal link between increased productivity in industries, particularly manufacturing, and increased pay and better jobs. This challenge is made with reference to other obstacles to improved jobs and better pay including a heavily deregulated labour market, poor and exploitative business practices and a lack of worker rights. This leads to a conclusion that productivity increases alone will not necessarily have a direct positive impact on job quality and pay without additional measures to tackle other causes of poor work and wage inequalities.