Between January and March, there were 4.3 million 16 to 64-year-olds living in households where no adult was employed. This is almost 300,000 higher than the end of last year and the highest total in seven years.
It comes amid a wider worklessness crisis that experts warn is crippling Britain’s growth as Rishi Sunak gears up for a general election in July.
Nationally, there were 9.4 million working-age adults who were economically inactive at the beginning of the year, meaning they were neither employed nor looking for work, up by 832,000 compared with pre-pandemic levels.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory MP and former business secretary, said high levels of economic inactivity were a “huge problem” for the country.
He said: “If you have people who are not in work, they’re not going to be helping to boost GDP per capita. So it means the state has less money to pay either for tax cuts or public services.
“It also encourages people to make the argument that we need mass migration because there is work that needs to be done and the people who work for us aren’t obviously doing it.”
Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), said the surge in jobless households was likely driven by an increase in worklessness among young people.