Impacts of the Brexit referendum on UK employment: a synthetic control method approach

ABSTRACT

We estimate the impact of the 2016 Brexit referendum on the UK (un-)employment rate up to January 2020 by comparing the observed performance of the indicators in the UK with those of a synthetic control. The decline in the UK unemployment rate recorded after the referendum mimics the trend of the synthetic indicator and, similarly, the increase in UK employment follows the trend of the synthetic control. Overall, we find that the Brexit referendum has had little effect on the UK (un-)employment rate.

KEYWORDS:

• Unemployment
• impact evaluation
• synthetic analysis
• European Union
• United Kingdom

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E24
• J64

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For more information on the Eurostat database, visit the following website https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database (lastly accessed the 22/03/2022).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the no funder.