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.
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.
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.
“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.