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Technological transformation is having profound impacts on the creation, nature and distribution of good work across the country.
The Good Work Monitor Time Series tracks trends in access to good work across local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales. This unique view over time is designed to help policymakers at all levels of government identify the most effective ways to improve economic, technological, social and health outcomes together.
"If we are to improve access to good jobs and to create ‘good automation’ in this period of rapid technological transformation, we need good data on how each part of the country is faring. IFOW’s Good Work Monitor is a vital, multidimensional resource to help with this, offering insights at national and regional level on both good work and productivity." - Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides
Good work is more than employment. It is work that promotes dignity, autonomy and equality; work that has fair pay and conditions; work where people are properly supported to develop their talents and have a sense of community. Our research has shown that, more than any other single factor, access to good jobs will determine future prospects for people and places across Great Britain.
The creation of good jobs is a core part of this government’s missions and its recently published Industrial Strategy, which sets out a new economic approach for a new era of transformation. The Industrial Strategy reinforces the creation and access to good jobs as a cross-cutting policy objective to drive a thriving, more resilient economy, from investment and procurement to the need for new institutions and evaluation metrics. The Good Work Monitor Time Series has served to support this agenda for five years.
IFOW’s Pissarides Review of Work and Wellbeing found that technological transformation is having profound and increasing impacts on good work – impacts that are often masked by headline statistics. The Pissarides Review also found that good quality work mediates better outcomes from AI and automation, and that indicators of good work can serve as measures and proxies for well-functioning local innovation ecosystems and inclusive growth. The Good Work Monitor therefore serves multiple functions in monitoring progress on key findings in the Pissarides Review.
This 2025 edition – incorporating data from 2009 up to 2024 – builds on annual releases to reveal good work trends over a 15-year period, allowing economic shocks and regional variation to be situated in a longer-term context. Alongside the Disruption Index, the Good Work Monitor Time Series tracks the environment in which work is created and shaped, distributed and disrupted, and begins to show the likely outcomes of technological transformation, on current trajectories.
"The Good Work Monitor is a powerful tool that has allowed Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to better understand the challenges and opportunities for achieving sustained and equitable growth and lasting job quality improvements in a changing economy. At a time of place-based industrial transformation, using it has allowed local partners to design strategic interventions that could enable the region to establish itself as a national leader in good work practices for peripheralised economies across the UK." - Dr Harry Pitts, Director of Business Engagement & Innovation, The Cornish Institute
Both the 2025 Good Work Monitor and Disruption Index highlight widening regional inequalities and interactions across a number of domains. This supports ongoing learning and review about where to intervene, what to prioritise and where new data sets are needed to monitor cumulative impacts. The 2025 Good Work Monitor shows widening gaps between top and bottom performers, and that many differences between local areas are becoming more pronounced.
To enhance this picture and support delivery of the Industrial Strategy, this edition of the Good Work Monitor includes an analysis using the most current, available data on productivity.1 This shows a stagnation for nearly a decade, with the only exceptions being areas surrounding London.
Together, our analyses invite challenge to several persisting assumptions: that employment levels and job quality, fairness and growth are somehow incompatible; that growth may result in fewer jobs or fewer good quality jobs; and that the acceleration of AI adoption and automation will not automatically lead to good jobs or other good outcomes. Our analyses indicate how these challenges will be critical to effective delivery of the growth mission and the Industrial Strategy.
Our work has consistently highlighted data gaps that are preventing a more dynamic, systematic approach to policy making, enabling more targeted interventions, pilots, evaluation and adjustment. The insights from our new research point to the importance of establishing effective public data and analysis infrastructures, with new monitoring and evaluation functions, extending to technology use, all the dimensions of good work, and work-related capabilities.
1 Gross Value Added (GVA) per hour, released to 2022
Institute for the Future of Work
Report
Changing work
