Rise of the long-term sick

Britain’s workforce is no longer shrinking, according to a mixed set of data on the state of the UK job market. But, on a more worrying note, the Chancellor’s mission to get the long-term sick back to work has so far showed no signs of working.

 Sadly, the number of Brits who are classified as “economically inactive” due to long-term sickness has reached a fresh peak of over 2.5 million, according to the latest ONS figures. This number is up around 422,000 since before Covid. 

“Economically inactive” is a broad category of all working-age adults who are neither in work nor looking for jobs, which encompasses students, retired, the long-term sick and carers. The number of Brits out of work has risen by over half a million since Covid hit, to around a fifth of the adult population. What’s more concerning is that new OECD findings show the UK has suffered the biggest post-pandemic decline in workforce participation of any G7 economy. 

Yet the latest employment figures show that more people returned to the job market between December and February, with the number of vacancies falling by 47,000 from the previous quarter, the ninth time in a row there has been a fall. Overall the inactivity rate dropped, albeit by a slim 0.4%. This fall is mainly down to more young people leaving full-time education to find a job. 

Less reassuringly, companies are still struggling to recruit staff, with vacancies remaining at high levels of more than 1.1 million. And the ratio of unemployed people per vacancy is 1:2, which means there are not enough people to fill the vacancies.

What’s more, the total number of those inactive because of ill-health is up by more than 150,000 in the past year and up by 89,000 in the three months to February alone.

The rise of the long-term sick is largely seen as a lingering impact of the pandemic – a trend coined as Covid’s “long tail”. It’s not just down to individuals suffering from long covid but all those who saw their mental and physical health conditions deteriorate due to the pressure the pandemic placed on the NHS and subsequent long delays in medical treatments. 

In Jeremy Hunt’s Spring budget – otherwise known as his “back to work budget” – the Chancellor attempted to offer some incentives to get Brits back to the labour market. He announced plans to separate benefit entitlement from an individual’s ability to work, meaning disabled benefit claimants will always be able to seek work without fear of losing financial support. As well as trying to help the long-term ill, there are also plans to entice those who retired early during the lockdown period, such as plans to introduce “returnerships”, to bring older citizens back into the workplace. 

But new data suggests the proposals have not had time to work yet.

More crucial to solving the problem of the growing numbers of long-term ill is tackling the record NHS backlog. Having surpassed 7 million, the number of people on England waiting for hospital treatment is now larger than the entire population of Denmark (5.8 million) or New Zealand (5.1 million). 

NHS strikes threatened to make a bad situation worse, with last week’s four-day junior doctor walkout expected to lead to the cancellation of another quarter of a million appointments and operations across the NHS. 

Reducing this backlog must be the key to reversing the distressing rising trend of the long-term sick. 

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