Young people are behind a surge in economic inactivity over the past year, statisticians have warned.
The number of people who were neither in work nor looking for a jobs rose slightly to 9.3m in the three months to January, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It was an increase of 44,000 compared to the previous three months and 700,000 higher than pre-pandemic levels.
However, the inactivity rate among 16 to 24-year-olds has surged to 4.5pc, compared to 1.3pc for the working-age population as a whole.
Liz McKeown, ONS director of economic statistics [Director of Public Policy Analysis], said: “An important trend that we are seeing there is young people.
“If we look over the last year we’ve seen that increases in inactivity have been concentrated in the younger age groups, particularly in that 16-24 year-old age group. We’ve seen that increase by 248,000 over a year."
“We’ve also seen employment going down for young people. While the number of people has gone up overall, that isn’t true for the 16-24 age group.”
She added there had also been “an important increase in the year in long-term sick” which has grown by 85,000.
She said: “Recently we’ve been seeing historically high levels of people who are inactive because they are long term sick which of course is a concern.”
Ms McKeown said it was not possible to say if young people were driving the rise in inactivity because of sickness.
...civilization, indeed, the great problem of which is how to get rid of the heaps of corpses it made after the battle was over!