Huge drop in workless social households - ONS

Published by 24publishing for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Central Government, Communities, Local Government

The number of council/housing association households that are workless has fallen for the second year in a row, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The ONS figures - which look at households where no adult aged 16 to 64 is in work – show that there were 80,000 fewer council/housing association households that were workless in 2012 with the figure now at 1.5 million.

Across all tenures the number of workless households fell by 153,000 to 3.7 million in 2012, making 18% of households workless.

In total, there were 5.02 million people aged 16 to 64 living in workless households and a further 1.75 million children aged 0 to 15.

The data shows that around 45 per cent of council/housing association households were workless, compared with 4 per cent of households buying their home through a mortgage, 23 per cent who owned their property outright and 20 per cent renting privately.

The figures will encourage the Government which has embarked on a radical welfare reform agenda aimed at getting people back into work.

The main reason for worklessness was being disabled or sick. Around 1.45 million people gave this reason, accounting for 29 per cent of those in workless households. The second most common reason was unemployment, accounting for 1.03 million, or around 1 in every 5.

Although the figures for households where all members have never worked – 340,000 – fell by 20,000 they still represent nearly double the figure 16 years ago.