Week 35, 2011: UK Workless Households

Summary: Data published this week showed a small drop in the total number of workless households in the UK. However, the number of households containing nobody who has ever worked is at the highest level since the published records began.

What does the chart show? The blue line, measured against the left hand axis, shows the total number of households (in thousands) that do not contain anyone who is currently working, over the previous year. This includes both the unemployed (currently looking for work) and the inactive (not looking for work), although only households which contain at least one person aged between 16-64 are counted. The red line, measured against the right hand axis, shows the subset of households where all occupants have never been in paid employment, except for casual or holiday work (also in thousands). Households containing only students aged 16-24 are excluded from this measure.

Why is the chart interesting? The focus in the media has been on the total number of currently workless households, which fell in 2011 to just under 3.9 million (out of a total of 20.6 million, or 18.8%). The graph shows that this number grew sharply after the recession of 2008, and it is encouraging to see it beginning to recede. However, this drop hides two troubling features of the statistics.

Firstly, it hides quite large regional disparities. Compared to the national average of 18.8% of households that are workless, the South East has only 14.1% and the East of England 15.2% while the North East has 24.9% and Yorkshire and the Humber has 21.7%. These regional imbalances have been a problem for a while, and they continue to pose a problem.

Secondly, and more worryingly, the number of households that do not contain anyone who has ever worked has been increasing steadily since at least 1996, and has doubled over the whole period. Almost 300,000 households in the UK today have no experience of paid employment. Even worse, there are currently just over 300,000 children (aged under 16) growing up in these households, and this number is growing fast (up 41,000 on last year).