But business groups said more needed to be done to get more people into work amid concerns over the UK's long-term weak economic growth.
Hmmm. Maybe better pay, better conditions and improvements to our work/life balance could do the trick here....nah it's the workers who are lazy.
No, no, no. Immigration!
It's cheap for companies as they will work for less, they don't complain because they need to work for the visa, no need to train anyone, if anyone else complains can just sack them and get more immigrants.
What's not to like?
Long-term illness has been cited as the main reason for about a third of the working-age inactive population not being in the labour force.
But other groups placed in the bracket - defined differently to unemployment - by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) include students, people who look after family or a home, people with disabilities, and early retired and discouraged workers. More women tend to be classed as economically inactive compared to men.
"Discouraged workers" is an intriguing category.
I wonder if it's people fed up with getting bounced around by zero hour contracts.
It's not fun making minimum wage with a boss that will only give you 8 random hours a week.
So they go "sod this, I'll live with my mum and help around the house until I can find a job that treats me properly"
That seems to be it. I remember being on the dole many moons ago and they'd go "you are overqualified for this but there's this job as a chicken de-boner..." I'd imagine a large section of the job market today is orders of magnitude worse with soul-crushing zero hours work.
I know a few people in situations like this. Living with family and ticking over on occasional informal cash in hand labour or on previously accumulated savings.
Weird. Long term illness is disability.
These figures never make any sense because they include people who are unable to work.
Yes that's right people who are unable to work are not looking for work. Ugh really?
It tracks tho. Political opinion seems to be that no one is really incapable of work so everyone should be included in the figures. Sigh.
Maybe we should give everyone and go at being PM. I mean you can't be that hard.
I guess that's why unemployed is a more often cited number than this one. But surely it is interesting non the less to know how much of the workforce isn't looking for work?
The issue is it doesn't differentiate between people who are not working because they're 95 years old and people who are not working because they are sick.
If you're trying to make policy decisions based on this data it's literally useless. Maybe you have a very old population maybe you will have a very unwell population. Who knows.
This group are included or not included depending on whatever point a particular person is trying to make. If the government is trying to claim that unemployment is down this entire group will not be considered. Because it is ambiguous some legitimate justification has been provided to not include the group.
I don't understand. The amount of people not in work, I guess is used to look about how taxes relate overall population to workers. That's important, there is useful information in there.
But like what you are saying that why unemployment figures are used and not number of people in work. Number of people not in work is more of a newspaper headline than anything governments look at.
It i- just looked it up and the ONS defines it as … the economically inactive population who said their main reason for not seeking work was because they believed there were no jobs available.
That seems oddly... incurious.
I don't think it's any surprise that we are the second worst for mental health in the world. If the Tories genuinely cared about the economy rather than ideology they'd invest heavily in boosting the mental health sector and making sure we had a good supply of the medication.
They could also stop making everything worse, since that tends to lead to more negative mental health outcomes.
They are pathologically incapable of doing the right thing.
If you gave them the trolley problem they wouldn't be able to cope because they wouldn't be able to figure out how to run everyone over.
For the vast majority of that group it's more of a case they are economically restricted. Untreated mental health issues due to our health service, childcare needs that can't be met if they work. Then being framed to be inactive feels disengenuous to people that would like nothing more than to be healthy happy and properly supported to work.
I'm a bit puzzled by "working age" being classed as 16-64. Is that an admission that a very large proportion of those between 64 and the state pension age (66 increasing to 68) are actually unable to continue in employment?
My wife couldn't for 8 years... Childcare was and still is a nightmare. She's going to apply for her first job since we moved from Ireland. We had zero benefits etc all this time.
It'll suck. Big part of her money will be spent on childcare. But we can no longer afford to live.
And conveniently the way unemployment is counted these people are not included in the figure.
Hasn't it been that way since unemployment was recorded anywhere in the world?
It's just like disposable income. It doesn't mean what people think it's means.
To some extent yes, but they're always fiddling the way it's counted in the UK to make it seem better.
Wonderful news, more of this please!
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