One in five of working-age population is now economically inactive?

 

There are now nine million 16 to 64-year-olds who are out of the workforce in UK,Erza Bailey/Getty Images

 ONE IN TEN YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE NO INTENTION WHATSOEVER OF GETTING A JOB,ACCORDING TO A NEW SURVEY.

That’s 227,000 kids aged between 18 and 24 with no plans to do anything whatsoever to earn a living.

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Never in human history have we had a young generation which is so affluent and so magnificently entitled.

These are people who genuinely believe that old cliché that the world owes them a living. The reasons for this strange and deluded mindset are many and various. That generation has been too cosseted and pampered.

It has known nothing of real hardship. And so it doesn’t see why it should demean itself by working. It would much rather “express itself”. And somehow expect to get paid for it.

It is also the case that the old notions of the benefits of work — the discipline, the gift of your labour to society and to the community, the notion that you can only be rewarded if you actually DO something — means nothing to them.

Our fault, really. We have brought them up wrong.

But then there’s this. We lavish our shared money — through tax — on ever-increasing benefits for the perpetually idle.

“Something odd is going on in Britain’s job market,” said Richard Partington in The Guardian. We’re in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, and heading into recession, yet growing numbers of people are giving up work and becoming “economically inactive” – not in a job, and not looking for one.

Across the world, Covid disrupted employment patterns. In other advanced economies, employment levels have since bounced back. In the UK, by contrast, 630,000 people are “missing” – they left the workforce some time between February 2020 and August 2022, and haven’t come back. In total, there are now nine million 16- to 64-year-olds who are economically inactive – one in five of the working-age population.

Some of these people will be better off fifty-somethings who have decided that they no longer want or need to work; but for others, economic inactivity will have been forced on them, by the lack of affordable childcare, or support for elderly relatives, or by their own poor health. It is this last group – the long-term sick – whose numbers have grown the most, to a record 2.5 million.

This trend is “troubling” in various ways, said Emma Duncan in The Times. Aside from the human cost, it’s depriving the Treasury of tax revenue; leaving businesses short of the staff they need to grow; stoking inflation; and putting pressure on the government to loosen immigration rules. More people entering the workforce, and staying in it longer, has been an engine of prosperity for decades. Yet now that is going into reverse.

The blame game

The question is, why? Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, blames malingerers, and of course if there were no benefits, more people would have to work or they’d starve; but Britain’s rules for claiming disability and sickness benefits are already among the strictest in Europe, and the surge has been too steep and sudden for malingering to be a significant driver.More likely, what we’re seeing is the impact of a long-standing trend towards poor health, exacerbated by long Covid.

Pinch points to address

“Whatever the causes, there are some obvious pinch points to address,” said the FT. Tackling NHS waiting lists would surely help; as would better local access to training and job support. But employers must do their bit too, by offering more job security, flexible working arrangements, and workplace support.

What we can’t do is sit back and hope the problem solves itself. The longer people are out of work, the “more their skills and confidence atrophy”; and with baby boomers set to retire in droves in the next few years, finding people to fill vacancies is only going to get harder. One way or another, we need to entice the “missing” back into work.

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