ABSTRACT
It is clear from previous chapters that London has undergone a rapid transformation in recent decades from an industrial city, with a third of its workforce in manufacturing, and a large number of skilled and semi-skilled manual workers, to a post-industrial city dominated by financial and business services employment with a predominantly nonmanual workforce and a growing proportion of professional and managerial workers. This chapter examines the implications of this transition for the distribution of both individual earnings and household incomes. It is important to differentiate the two as earnings data relate to earnings from employment, and are usually available only for individual earners and, by definition, exclude the unemployed who have no earnings from formal work. Income comes from a variety of sources, including earnings, but it also includes unemployment pay and other transfer payments such as pensions, and supplementary benefits, interest and dividends. Most income data are for households, which is important, as questions of income inequality are particularly salient at the household level (Williams and Windebank, 1995).
