Evidence from Dr Kris Fuzi featured in the report National Minimum Wage, Low Pay Commission Report 2024, including his reference to the 'flexibility trap'.
We’re pleased to see evidence from CHASM’s Dr Kris Fuzi feature in the report National Minimum Wage, Low Pay Commission Report 2024, published this month. The report provided the evidence behind recommendations for the National Minimum Wage (NML), including the National Living Wage (NLW), that apply from 1 April 2025.
Dr Kris Fuzi is a Research Fellow with CHASM and leads our research theme of Risk and Financial Wellbeing in Later Life. He is developing a research agenda into issues associated with inequalities, insecurities, and uncertainties in later life financial wellbeing.
Challenges associated with low pay and related insecurities have been highlighted in Kris's recent PhD thesis titled Precarious Lives and Financial Behaviour: An Investigation into the Impact of Insecurity on Saving and Pension Planning. He spoke to precarious workers to explore the impact of their work insecurities on their abilities to save or contribute to a pension.
Kris's research addressed specific groups of workers. These included low-paid freelance and self-employed workers and fixed-term, zero-hour, and part-time contract workers. Workers' annual net incomes were in the region of £10,000-£23,000 per annum; and they were aged between 28 and 52 years old. Fieldwork was conducted between June 2021 and June 2022, and included interviews, with participants keeping a financial diary for two weeks.
Low-wage, NMW and NLW workers are particularly susceptible to this flexibility trap, where increasingly contracts are offering flexibility but, in reality, flexible working practices are placing the financial risk of supply and demand onto workers.
Precarious workers were found to endure the financial inconsistency and lack of employer protection because of the flexibility such work offered around their personal lives. Low-wage, NMW, and NLW workers are particularly susceptible to this flexibility trap, where increasingly contracts are offering flexibility but, in reality, flexible working practices are placing the financial risk of supply and demand onto workers. This form of working is particularly prevalent in the food delivery and private transport industry, with research by the Living Wage Foundation showing insecure working practices are creeping in across the economy. Kris therefore felt it vital to consider financial inconsistency, employer protections, and flexible working practices alongside the level of NLW increase in April 2025.
The report, National Minimum Wage, Low Pay Commission Report 2024, is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/low-pay-commission
Dr Kris Fuzi’s PhD thesis, Precarious Lives and Financial Behaviour: An Investigation into the Impact of Insecurity on Saving and Pension Planning, is available at https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/precarious-lives-and-financial-behaviour-an-investigation-into-th-2
Research Fellow
Kris Fuzi is a Research Fellow and Research Theme Lead (Risk and Financial Wellbeing in Later Life) for the Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management
