Signed off sick: The parts of Britain that are not working

The party of work must focus on the communities where long-term sickness and economic inactivity have taken hold - before more fall to Nigel Farage,

- says Philip Collins

For the Labour party there is a clue in its name. This is a party established by workers and dedicated to both the moral virtue and the material prosperity that derive from productive work. As the pious Fabian Beatrice Webb wrote in 1893: "The existence and, I fear, the growth of this leisured class ... is the gravest problem of the future."

Yet Britain isn't working, and the Labour party is going to find it extremely difficult to live up to the virtue embodied in its name. The problem is, to use a medical term, acute:

• More than 9 million people in the UK are classified as economically inactive - the most concerning part of this large cohort is the number of people signed off sick.

• "Economically inactive" is not a measure of unemployment. The Labour Force Survey of February 2025 put unemployment at 4.4%, which is too high, but much lower than the post-crisis peak of more than 8% in 2011. Unemployment at that rate means 1.57 million people do not have a job.

• The additional 9.22 million people classified as economically inactive make up more than a fifth of the country's potential workforce.

Active inactive

Not all of this is alarming. More than a quarter of those classified as inactive are students and more than a tenth are retired. Neither group would exactly rejoice at being described as "inactive" - although some students might be.

There are also plenty of people caring for others. More than a quarter of all inactive women, and 6% of men, are at home or caring for elderly relatives or children, or both.

Off sick