As the gloves come off for election 12 months, Britain’s would-be leaders are circling a brand new political punch-bag: people who find themselves “economically inactive”.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), this term denotes those that usually are not currently in employment, who haven’t sought employment inside the last 4 weeks and who’re unable to begin work inside the subsequent two weeks. Between November 2023 and January 2024, 9.25 million 16 to 64-year-olds were inactive. This is similar to 21.8% of all working-age adults.
The renewed political focus is the most recent incarnation of what sociologists because the Nineteen Seventies have called “scroungerphobia”. My research shows that myths around individuals who aren’t working have long been promoted by mainstream UK politicians and right-wing news media.
What the information actually shows, nevertheless, is that swathes of persons are facing serious and sophisticated life challenges. The rise in economic inactivity is being driven by mental ill-health and burnout, growing NHS waiting lists and Britain’s increasing reliance on unpaid carers. Many of those affected face deepening poverty after years of cuts to out-of-work advantages.
Samuel Wordley/Alamy
Workless households
The Conservative party is rebooting Coalition-era myths about “shirkers” and “scroungers”. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has vowed to withdraw advantages from “workless” households content to “coast on the exertions of taxpayers”.
Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride, meanwhile, has belittled the growing number of young people diagnosed with work-limiting mental health conditions as too feeble to handle life’s “normal ups and downs”. And Rishi Sunak has denounced advantages as “a way of life selection” while heralding a crackdown on “sick note culture”.
Meanwhile, in efforts to court floating voters in red (and blue) wall seats, the Labour party is reverently re-framing this target market as “working people”. This is obvious in countless speeches, Commons debates and Labour’s much-trumpeted New Deal for Working People.
In a recent speechthe shadow work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, condemned ministers’ “failure to become familiar with welfare”. Drawing on the pictures of people that voluntarily don’t work often invoked by Tory ministers, she said: “The reality is, increasing numbers of persons are leaving the labour market and not even in search of work.”
The very first thing to notice is that this dramatic rise in economic inactivity rates includes some those who no one expects to work. One in 4 of those counted are full-time students.
Further, a brand new Resolution Foundation report has diagnosed Britain’s post-pandemic inactivity problem as a “U-shaped legacy”. People in each the 16-to-24 and 50-to-64 brackets collectively account for 90% of the rise in economic inactivity since 2019.
Four years of COVID have triggered what journalists have described as “the Great Retirement” – the growing trend amongst burnt-out or financially secure middle-aged and older employees to quit the workforce. Recent ONS data shows, nevertheless, that the continuing economic inactivity spike is being driven by younger adults.
Analysis by senior Resolution Foundation economist Louise Murphy highlights a growing problem of long-term sickness amongst young people. Since 2020, there was a 68% surge within the variety of applications for private independence payments in England and Wales (the foremost non-means-tested profit for individuals with health conditions or disabilities). This is skewed by a 138% increase in 16- and 17-year-old applicants and a 77% rise amongst 18-to-24-year-olds.
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data shows that, between January 2022 and November 2023, 69% of work capability assessments (tests used to find out whether someone is well enough for work) recorded mental and behavioural disorders. Murphy points out that the youngest and oldest claimants are the most definitely to be on health-related advantages.
What is the answer?
The pandemic has seen work change into more precarious, wages stagnate and each living costs and global uncertainty rise. This has resulted in a real mental health crisis amongst young people.
In 2021-22, 30% of 18 to 24-year-olds reported symptoms of conditions including depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder. Among inactive young people, 80% only hold GCSE or lower-level qualifications.
Murphy subsequently argues for higher support services in under-served colleges and higher provision for young people resitting exams. Politicians, against this, are castigating young people for not working.
In an interview with the Telegraph in March, Stride said: “If they go to the doctor and say ‘I’m feeling moderately down and bluesy’, the doctor will give them on average about seven minutes after which, on 94% of occasions, they can be signed off as not fit to perform any work in anyway.”
Kendall, meanwhile, has warned young those who there can be “no option of a life on advantages” under Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
The inactivity data points to other barriers to paid work: long-term illnesses and physical disabilities and unpaid care work. Government statistics show that these disproportionately impact people affected by intersectional inequalities, including those regarding race, ethnicity or gender.
The highest inactivity rate (33%) exists inside British Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. This group also suffers the most important gender gap: 48% of ladies, in comparison with 19% of men, are disengaged from the labour market, often on account of familial caring duties.
The most shaming hidden story of inactivity is buried deep in the information on “households below average incomes” released by DWP in March 2024.
In 2023, 25% of households with children were living in absolute poverty. That means one in 4 families had a net disposable income below 60% of the 2011 median income, adjusted for inflation. An extra 30% were in relative poverty (below 60% of the 2023 median).
Seven out of 10 poor families include not less than one working adult. This statistic has rightly been foregrounded within the media.
However, the indisputable fact that 59% of all children in so-called “workless families” were in relative poverty has all but been ignored. This represents greater than thrice as many as in so-called “working families”. It is the best poverty rate amongst inactive families since 2007.
Out-of-work advantages, that were price 20.1% of median pay in 1971, are set to slump to half that value by 2030. This is the results of 14 years of austerity measures by successive Conservative-led governments.
In other words, the acute levels of poverty endured by economically inactive people (as highlighted in the federal government’s own data) are a direct results of deliberate political selections to repeatedly erode advantages.
Starmer has repeatedly did not call out the connections between profit cuts, inactivity and working-aged poverty. Labour is subsequently complicit. By adopting this position, politicians across the board are denying, and prolonging, a national disgrace.