Britain's tax wedge, which estimates total taxes on labour paid by employees and employers, minus cash benefits received by working households, increased by 2.45 percentage points last year, the most in the OECD.
There are reasons to be worried and think about the future. But we are able to do something about this. We should be thinking about, well, how do we tip the balance in favour of AI being used in that positive way to help people do their jobs better [rather than replacing them].
Professionals have long been taught a simple formula for career success: work hard, outperform your peers, and bigger paychecks will follow. But this year, employers are planning to reward their star staffers differently; instead of factoring in merit, more companies are considering general pay hikes spread out evenly, dubbed the "peanut butter raises" trend. Around 44% of employers plan to roll out uniform, across-the-board wage bumps in 2026, according to a new Payscale report.
