New figures out this morning suggest that a record 2.8m Britons are not working due to ill health
The revised ONS figures suggest that the Number of long-term sick in UK is 200,000 more than previously thought.
The new data showed an unemployment rate of 3.9% compared with original 4.2% estimation.
The figures also suggest that employment is up 170,000 compared to previous estimates
The ONS has also revised the shape of the UK population, with a slightly larger share of younger (aged 16-17 and 18-24) workers (up 0.2 and 0.1 percentage points respectively), and a smaller share of workers aged 25-34 and 50-64 (down 0.3 and 0.2 percentage points).
The smaller share of ‘prime-age’ workers – the reduction in workers aged 25-34 and 50-64 has only partially been offset by a small increase, of 0.1 percentage points, in 35-49-year-olds – has driven the judgement that employment is lower than previously thought.
Hannah Slaughter, Senior Economist at the Resolution Foundation, said:
“Britain has a bigger, but sicker, workforce than we previously thought. Of particular concern is that the fact that a record 2.8 million people in the country are currently inactive due to ill-health.
“Tackling rising ill-health is a huge social and economic challenges that we’ll be facing throughout the 2020s, as will getting the UK employment back up to and beyond pre-pandemic levels.”
