Summary

What the indicators show: working-age adults

In low-income»

• At around a fifth in 2008/09, the proportion of working-age adults who are in low-income households is now slightly higher than at any time since the mid-1990s.
• Inner London has a much higher proportion of working-age adults who are in low-income households than any other region.

Low income by work status»

• An adult’s risk of low income varies greatly depending on how much paid work the family does. These risks have increased substantially for both 'all-working' and 'part-working' families.
• Among working-age adults in low income, the number in working families has been rising and now exceeds the number in workless ones.
• Most of the rise in working families in low income has been among those without dependent children.
• Among working-age adults in low income, more than half now have someone in their family who is in paid work.

Low income and disability»

• Disabled adults are twice as likely to live in low-income households as non-disabled adults, and this has been the case throughout the last decade.
• Disabled adults in workless families are actually somewhat less likely to be in low income than their non-disabled counterparts.
• For all family types, a disabled adult's risk of being in low income is much greater than that for a non-disabled adult.
• The proportion of economically inactive working-age adults who are in relative low income is higher in the UK than in any other EU country.

Low income by age»

• Of the 1.7 million adults aged 16 to 24 in low-income households, 1.1 million are single adults without children.
• Four-fifths of lone parents in low-income households are aged 25 or older.
• Of the 1.6 million adults aged 34 to 42 in low-income households, 1 million are in families where someone is working and most of these are couples with children.
• Of the 1.2 million adults aged 52 to 60 in low-income households, 600,000 have a disabled adult in the family and most of these are workless.

Low income and council tax»

• More than half of all low-income households are paying full Council Tax, much higher than a decade ago.
• 7 million people in England and Wales are living in low-income households where the household is paying full Council Tax.
• The vast majority of low income working-age families where someone is working pay full Council Tax.

Concentrations of worklessness»

• Overall, claimant numbers have followed similar trends in both the areas with the most claimants and the areas with the least claimants.
• Around 30% of working-age people receive out-of-work benefits in the areas with the highest concentrations. This compares with around 10% in areas with average concentrations.
• 40% of working-age recipients of out-of-work benefits live in a fifth of small areas, whilst the other 60% live outside of these areas.

Wanting paid work»

• The number of people who lack, but want, paid work has been rising since 2005, not just during the current recession.
• Around half of those who lack, but want, paid work are not officially unemployed.
• For women of all ages, and for older men, those who are economically inactive but want paid work substantially outnumber the officially unemployed.
• The proportion of the working-age population lacking who lack, but want, paid work is highest in the North East of England.

Work and disability»

• 40% of those with a work-limiting disability are working.  A further 25% lack, but want, paid work.
• Whilst the proportion of lone parents who are not in paid work has fallen a lot, the proportion of disabled people who are not in paid work has remained broadly unchanged.
• Disability affects work status much more than gender or even lone parenthood.
• Among those who are aged 25 to retirement and are not working, almost half are disabled.
• At every level of qualification, the proportion of people with a work-limiting disability who lack, but want, paid work is much greater than for those without a disability.
• The proportion of people who both have a work-limiting disability and lack, but want, paid work is noticeably higher in the North East than elsewhere.

Work and lone parents»

• 57% of lone parents are working, up from 51% a decade ago.
• The proportion of lone parents who lack, but want, paid work is similar in all regions except for London (higher) and Northern Ireland (lower).

Work and ethnicity»

• One in seven adults aged 25 to retirement from ethnic minorities are not working but want to, lower than a decade ago but still much higher than that for White people.
• Around a third of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are both not in paid work and say that they do not want paid work, a much higher proportion than that for any other ethnic group.
• Most Bangladeshi and Pakistani women are not in paid work.
• A quarter of working-age Black African, Bangladeshi and Black Caribbean households are workless.

Work and gender»

• The proportion of working-age women who are not working is much lower than forty years ago whilst the equivalent proportion for men is much higher.
• These trends - of increasing work rates for women and decreasing work rates for men - have been happening throughout the last forty years.
• Differences in work rates between men and women are much less among those aged 18 to 24 than in older age groups.

Blue collar jobs»

• While the total number of jobs is higher than a decade ago, the number of jobs in manufacturing, construction and other production industries has fallen.
• Within production, it is manufacturing which has been declining, with the number of jobs in construction to a decade ago.
• The pattern of an increase in total jobs, combined with a decrease in the number of jobs in the production industries, has occurred throughout most of the United Kingdom.
• One in three full-time male workers are in production industries, compared to around one in ten full-time female workers and part-time workers.
• Manufacturing, construction and other production industries are the areas which are dominated by full-time male workers.

In workless households»

• Single adult households - both with and without children - are much more likely to be workless than couple households.
• More than half of all workless, working-age households are single adults without dependent children.
• The UK has a higher proportion of its working-age population living in workless households than most other EU countries, all bar Belgium, Hungary and Germany.

Numbers in low pay»

• The proportion of employees aged 22 and over who were low paid fell between 2002 and 2005 but has not changed much since then. In 2010, a fifth of the women - and a tenth of the men - were paid less than £7 per hour.
• Whatever low-pay threshold is used, the proportion of working women who are low paid is around twice that of working men.
• At all ages, at least 30% of part-time employees are paid less than £7 per hour. Except for the 18-21 age group, the proportion of full-time employees paid less than £7 per hour is much lower.
• In two areas of occupation - elementary and sales & customer service - two-thirds of part-time employees are paid less than £7 per hour.
• More than half of those paid less than £7 per hour are part-time workers, mainly women.
• Almost half of those paid less than £7 per hour are aged 40 or over.

Low pay by industry»

• Two-third of employees in hotels & restaurants - and half of those in retail & wholesale - earn less than £7 per hour. Three-fifths of them are women.
• Two-fifths of all low-paid employees work in the hotel, restaurant, retail and wholesale sectors. A further quarter work in the public sector.
• Much of the low pay in the hotels & restaurants and retail & wholesale sectors is in the younger age groups. By contrast, low pay in the public sector is spread throughout the age range.

Location of low pay»

• In most regions, at least a fifth of all female employees earn less than £7 per hour.

Low pay and disability»

• For both full-time and part-time work, the proportion of employees with a work-limiting disability who are low paid is higher than that for employees without a work-limiting disability.
• At all levels of qualification, the proportion of people with a work-limiting disability who are low paid is somewhat greater than for those without a disability.

Low pay and ethnicity»

• Almost half of all Bangladeshi and Pakistani employees earn less than £7 per hour.

Pay inequalities»

• Low-paid women are paid around 10% less than low-paid men. High-paid women are paid around 20% less than high-paid men.
• A half of all part-time workers - both men and women - are paid less than £8 per hour.
• Pay inequalities are greater in London, South East and East than elsewhere.

Insecure at work»

• Half of the men, and a third of the women, making a new claim for Jobseeker's Allowance were last claiming less than six months previously.
• The number of people making a new claim for Jobseeker's Allowance who were last claiming less than six months previously has risen substantially since 2008.
• Most part-time employees do not want a full-time job - but only a quarter of temporary employees do not want a permanent job.
• Although rising in recent years, the number of people in temporary contracts is still somewhat lower than a decade ago.
• Only one in nine workers earning less than £7 an hour belong to a trade union, a much smaller proportion than for those with higher hourly earnings.

Access to training»

• Throughout the last decade, people with no qualifications have been around three times less likely to receive job-related training than those with some qualifications.
• The lower a person's level of educational qualifications, the less likely they are to receive job-related training.
• Access to training differs significantly by occupation, being least in elementary (routine) occupations, plant & machine operatives and skilled trades.
• The best access to training is in the public sector.

Without qualifications»

• The proportion of the working-age population without any educational qualifications has fallen by two-fifths over the last decade.
• The proportion of people in their twenties without any educational qualifications is much smaller than the proportion for people aged 40 and over but similar to the proportion for people in their thirties.
• The proportion of the working-age population without any educational qualifications is much higher in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the UK.
• Around half of the working-age population lack basic numeracy skills and one in six lack basic literacy skills.

Premature death»

• The rate of premature death has fallen by around a fifth over the last decade. It is, however, still one and a half times as high among men as among women.
• Premature deaths are much higher in Scotland than elsewhere, for both men and women.
• Men aged 25-64 from routine or manual backgrounds are twice as likely to die as those from managerial or professional backgrounds. There are also similar proportion differences for women aged 25-59.
• For all major causes, death rates for men aged 25 to 64 are much higher among those from manual backgrounds than those from non-manual backgrounds (there is no equivalent data for women).
• The two biggest causes of death among men aged 25 to 64 are cancers and circulatory diseases (including heart disease).

Long-standing illness/disability»

• Around a quarter of adults aged 45-64 report a long-standing illness or disability which limits their activity.
• Two-fifths of all adults aged 45-64 on below-average incomes have a limiting longstanding illness or disability, more than twice the rate for those on above-average incomes.
• Adults aged 45-64 in routine and manual occupational groups are much more likely to have a limiting long-standing illness or disability than those from non-manual groups.
• The proportion of adults aged 45 to 64 who have a limiting long-standing illness in Wales, the North East and Northern Ireland is almost double that in the South East.

Mental health»

• The proportion of working-age people who are deemed to be at a high risk of developing a mental illness is similar to a decade ago. Women are more at risk than men.
• Adults in the poorest fifth are much more likely to be at risk of developing a mental illness than those on average incomes.
• People from manual backgrounds are at slightly higher risk of developing a mental illness than those from non-manual backgrounds.
• The risk of mental illness is similar across most of the regions in England.

Obesity»

• Almost a quarter of working-age people are now obese. This is a much higher proportion than in the early 1990s.
• There no obvious relationship between obesity and income. The groups with the lowest levels of obesity are poor men and rich women.
• There is no obvious relationship between obesity and social class.
• In England, the proportion of working-age adults who are obese is lowest in London.

top