25% of working age Brits are out of work

Sunday, October 5th, 2025

In the United Kingdom, one-quarter of the working-age population is currently out of work:

(For comparison, in the United States, a similar statistic finds that only 16.6 percent of people in prime working ages are out of the labor force.) Once someone becomes economically inactive due to health reasons, their chances of ever reentering employment within a year drop to 3.8 percent. Up to 3,000 new people per day are writing off work and being approved for sickness benefits, now totaling around 4 million people.

[…]

A National Health Service (NHS) Confederation report showed that in 2021–22, over 63,000 people went straight from studying to being economically inactive due to long-term sickness. In 2002, mental and behavioral problems were the main condition for 25 percent of claimants. In 2024, that figure rose to 44 percent. More than half of the rise in disability claims since 2019 was due to mental health or behavioral conditions, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

[…]

About 69 percent of those who apply for sickness benefits mention depression, anxiety, or some other kind of mental or behavioral disorder. Mental illness is now being cited by 48 percent of disabled working Brits, making mental health the single biggest problem.

[…]

According to data collected by the TaxPayers’ Alliance, a total of 1.75 million people in England received enhanced personal independence payments (PIP) in April 2025, an increase from 734,136 in January 2019. PIP is just one of many types of social security available to working-age claimants, intended to help them deal with the extra costs of disability. It is available to those in work. However, only one-sixth of PIP recipients are working. Some are receiving these benefits for seemingly minor ailments, including acne, constipation, obesity, “old age,” irritable bowel syndrome, writer’s cramp, and food intolerances.

[…]

In 2019, the number of PIP claimants for autism was 26,256, and by April 2025, this number had jumped to 114,211. For anxiety and depression, it went from 23,647 in 2019, to 110,075 in April 2025. For ADHD, in the same period, it went from 4,233 to 37,339.

[…]

As ludicrous as this sounds, approximately 80 percent of PIP claimants are not in work at all. A person getting incapacity benefits and PIP could be getting 23,899 pounds (roughly $32,250), which is already more than the minimum wage. Someone with children is entitled to even more. When PIP is combined with housing benefits, universal credit, and other offerings, someone could be entitled to 27,354 pounds (roughly $37,000) without paying taxes.

Posted in Economics, Policy | 1 Comment »

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Jim says:

October 6, 2025 at 2:59 pm

Do the other 75% of working-age Britons make anything of more value than they would were they out of work?

Jim: If the new Arab ruler of the disputed territory formerly known as New-York is unable to reassign titles of real property or pass window guidance, he cannot suppress his subjects’ costs of living.
Bob Sykes: Evidently, the officers of the prewar US military were of rather high quality, both intellectually and ethically, more-so than today’s. Was that a result of serving in a very small, poorly funded, slow-promotion military? Marshall, King, Eisenhower, Nimitz… Everyone knew everybody One thinks, too, of the unusual (for today) group of regular army officers, many veterans of the Mexican War, that served in the Civil War.
Handle: That last paragraph is very well crafted with perfect tone of dry wit and gentlemanly light comedy. My esteem for Groves grows ever higher.
Bruce: Most well-off middle-class people in 2025 are D patronage hires. They vote for the D candidate who offers the biggest patronage expansion.
Bob Sykes: The median US family income in 2024 was $83,730.
Bob Sykes: The take away is that scientists always lie.
Phileas Frogg: One wonders how many other materials and inventions are floating around just waiting for someone to give them a novel application. Unrelated, but the bacterial/antibiotic arms race is a fascinating little war.
Phileas Frogg: Life has ever loved the sting of living.
McChuck: It’s cool that they can do that, but the main point of fuel cells is to power vehicles. Ceramics aren’t known for their ability to handle potholes.
Jim: The Soviet Union survived Germany’s onslaught only with United State materiel. Then the United State had nukes and the Soviet Union didn’t. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what should’ve happened next.
Bruce: Jim, after Hitler betrayed the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Soviets would have been nuts not to prepare for every other alliance ending in an invasion of Russia. Nazi and Communist cooperation went back before Hitler took power. German weapons and tactics were tested on Soviet territory with Soviet aid since the early 1920s. By comparison, the US was a stranger.
Jim: The strangest part of the Second World War is how the United State’s military could’ve simply marched to Moscow in a few weeks, nearly uncontested, and simply chose not to—even without the exclusive possession of atomic weaponry which it, in fact, had. Moreover, for four full years, the United State had absolute military supremacy over the Soviet Union: between 1945 and 1949, the one could’ve nuked the other at its convenience and without credible retaliation. The Great General...
Bruce: Before reading Groves, I thought the decisive gift of nukes to Stalin came from a communist going to Oppenheimer and saying, ‘I’d like a vacation back in New York. You know, visit the Soviet embassy, show them some secret plans’ and Oppenheimer saying ‘Sure! My kid’s babysitter Klaus Fuchs can give you tips!’ And that happened. But Joliot-Curie, Communist party member, was thinking of building an A-bomb in the Sahara with Congo pitchblende before the Manhatten...
Space Nookie: Any future tank will have to be manufactured in mass numbers in factories with contested supply chains, then transported to whatever shithole proxy war is ongoing where the bridges are rated for max 40 tons. It will be knocked out, recovered, and repaired multiple times before it is discarded and stripped for parts.
Alex S.: “Main battle tanks rely primarily upon their speed and long-range firepower” Starts with an outdated assertion. When you can have precision fire of dozens of km by missile, round artillery, drones suddenly the tank finds itself as a short range weapon. Then a falsehood, tank speed?! Land movement is always slow.
Phileas Frogg: Rooster Rocket: “Most amerindian women are NOT attractive. From the “smashed in the face with an iron pan” look of those in the southwest, to the reservation welfare-dependantapotomu ses on the reservations, yikes. Further east amerindians were more attractive, especially where there was more white/indian intermingling. Read some James Lafond for more details.” Too true. The Seneca Nation of Indians are near to my home and an old joke in the area goes: “What did the...
McChuck: David Drake (Hammer’s Slammers) and Keith Laumer (BOLO) were prescient. They were both right about what sort of tanks the future might hold, and what those tanks would need to survive.
Isegoria: Earlier today Samuel Bendett cited a Russian piece on lessons learned from Ukraine: The tank is the primary means of line-of-sight fire; in fact, it was designed as a protected platform for such fire It is now an easily detectable and easily hit target with an ineffective line-of-sight weapon system. As a result, the tank has lost its once-essential role as an army’s primary means of breakthrough and maneuver. It is unclear what benefit a vulnerable vehicle with limited armament...
McChuck: They’re not wrong, but such a tank would be hideously expensive. We still need light, medium, and heavy armored vehicles. What we really need is something very similar to the Finnish Patria NEMO. 120mm direct-fire capable, rifled gun-mortar. Interdict an intersection 5 miles away, drop rounds on the other side of the building you’re next to, put rounds into the windows on that building right over there, then blow up the onrushing VBIED.
Bruce: In this book Groves makes the point that the tremendous investment in building the bomb was a factor in deciding to use it. Sunk cost fallacy. If the cream of the US Army regulars had gone into nukes, our chances of using nukes would have been greater. ‘…in time of war every possible regular officer should be in the combat area’. Maybe. Keeping valuable, trustworthy regulars home and throwing expendable allies, felons, and conscripts into the meat grinder first has worked for...

Isegoria

25% of working age Brits are out of work

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