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.
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 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.
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.
And conveniently the way unemployment is counted these people are not included in the figure.
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?
