Agency workers in UK exploited: Resolution Foundation
Full-time agency workers in the UK often earn hundreds of pounds less each year than employees doing equivalent work, according to a report from the Resolution Foundation. The think-tank is launching an 18-month investigation into such employment. Agency workers, who are often overlooked due to a focus on zero-hours contracts, also lack rights like sick pay and parental leave. Although 54% of agency workers are men, 85% of new temporary agency staff recruited in the last five years are women. Ethnic minorities are three times more likely to work for agencies than white workers.

Through the course of this report we have uncovered much new information about the lives of the UK’s ‘secret agents’. We have found two groups of agency workers – the permanent and the self-employed – who have been missing from all previous accounts. We have discovered what agency workers do, where they work and who they are. And, critically, we have found that there is a significant pay penalty attached to being an agency worker, with only little evidence to suggest that other features of this way of working compensate for this loss.