Charity's plea as nearly a fifth of households have no one working

Almost a fifth of households in Sunderland had nobody earning a wage or salary last year, new figures suggest.

- by Echo Reporter

Office for National Statistics figures show the city had 17,095 'workless households' in the area where no earned income was coming in.

That accounted for 18% of all households.

Nationally, more than three million families had nobody in work last year-just over 14% of all households-but this varied significantly around the country.

While there were just under 11% of households in the South East which had no worker, the figure climbed to 21% in the North East.

An employment charity called for action to "break the cycle of worklessness" and said that local health and opportunity inequalities can lead to higher proportions of households not in work.

A workless household is defined by the ONS as containing at least one person aged 16 to 64 where no adults are in employment.