The UK’s micro business population is booming. Defined as firms with 0-9 employees, there are now 5m such businesses in the UK, up from 3.5m in 2000. In contrast, the populations of all other firm sizes have either increased only marginally or fallen over the same period. The result is that micro businesses today account...

This report explores future automation and creativity in the UK and US workforces. We find that creative jobs will be much more resistant to automation than most other jobs.

The UK’s strong current growth performance compared with other countries must not detract from her deep–seated structural problems: namely, her low investment in skills, infrastructure and innovation. As a consequence of these problems, productivity – output per hour worked – is 17 per cent lower than the average for the rest of the G7 nations...

This report statistically examines whether being in a creative occupation is associated with higher levels of subjective wellbeing, once other factors that affect wellbeing are controlled for. Four different measures of subjective wellbeing (life satisfaction, worthwhileness, happiness and anxiety) from the UK’s Annual Population Survey are analysed. The research finds that most creative occupations have...

In our 2013 study, A Dynamic Mapping of the UK’s Creative Industries, we noted that concepts like the ‘creative industries’ and ‘creative economy’ – indeed ‘creativity’ itself – although widely used by policymakers, lacked sufficiently clear and rigorous definitions. The report aimed to address this weakness by introducing clear criteria for which occupations should or...