Pushed into the wrong job?
Assessing the link between conditionality and poor quality employment
10 February 2026
Successive central governments have designed benefit programmes with high levels of conditionality. The programmes have required claimants to actively look for work, in order to keep accessing social security. While some level of conditionality is not unusual compared to other countries, the UK has generally had one of the most conditional benefit systems in the world. The degree of conditionality has increased further since the introduction of universal credit.
Changes in recent years have had two key motivations. The first is the belief that conditionality will boost employment by getting claimants into ‘Any job’ first, which will then lead to a ‘Better job’ and then a ‘Career’. The previous government called this the ‘ABC’ approach. The previous minister for employment in the current government set out a desire to end the ABC approach, but it remains to be seen whether this will translate into concrete action. The second motivation is fiscal: to reduce the benefit bill by pushing people off support more quickly.
Increases in benefits conditionality can sometimes be counterproductive to the goals of promoting employment and reducing the benefits bill. Conditionality inherently weakens workers’ bargaining power – by forcing them to take any job regardless of quality or appropriateness – which leads to them taking on jobs that are poorly matched to their interests or skills. If people are matched into jobs that are unsuitable and/or low-quality, their career prospects will be limited and their likelihood of staying on or returning to social security increases.
This report assesses the effectiveness of higher conditionality and the ABC approach, as levers to achieve the goals of higher employment and a lower social security bill. It does this by measuring the extent to which UC claimants have access to good-quality jobs, and whether they end up working in them. It tests an alternative hypothesis for where higher conditionality and the ABC approach may lead: a feedback loop in which poor-quality work is subsidised and reinforced by the social security system.
Image: iStock
Topics Social security
