Working and workless households in the UK: January to March 2025

• Estimates from January to March 2025 include the full effect of recent improvements in Labour Force Survey (LFS) data collection and sampling methods introduced from January 2024 and are therefore more likely to be representative of labour market conditions.
• An increased amount of volatility will remain in the estimates from mid-2023 and throughout 2024, so we would advise caution when interpreting change involving those periods.
• We recommend using the LFS estimates as part of our suite of labour market indicators, alongside Workforce Jobs, Claimant Count and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates.
• Although LFS headline estimates have been reweighted to later population estimates, LFS household estimates remain weighted to population estimates published in November 2023 for periods from October to December 2023 onwards; a discontinuity has been introduced at this point, so comparisons before this point are not possible. 
• Of the estimated 21.71 million households (where at least one member is aged 16 to 64 years) in the UK, 59.5% had all household members aged 16 years and over in employment during January to March 2025.
• There were an estimated 26.5% of households with at least one working and one workless adult, and an estimated 14.1% of households where no member of the household was in employment.

Labour Force Survey (LFS) household datasets are used for analysis of family or household characteristics. For all analysis in this bulletin, a household is defined as containing at least one person aged 16 to 64 years. This bulletin focuses on the economic status of household members. For example:

• number of people in employment in the household
• number of people unemployed in the household
• number of people economically inactive in the household

Our Comparison of labour market data sources methodology, published on 27 April 2022, compares our labour market data sources and discusses some of the main differences.

LFS headline estimates are weighted to 2022 mid-year population estimates for periods from January to March 2019. However, LFS household estimates from October to December 2023 onwards remain weighted to information on the size and composition of the UK population consistent with the population estimates published in November 2023. This creates a discontinuity from October to December 2023 onwards. Users should account for this discontinuity when considering movements in the series. Household estimates for July to September 2023 are not currently available. All estimates in this release are not seasonally adjusted. 

Reweighting increased the levels of all labour market statuses but did not address issues surrounding increased LFS volatility resulting from smaller achieved sample sizes.

LFS estimates from January to March 2025 include the full effect of recent improvements in data collection and sampling methods introduced from January 2024 and are therefore more likely to be representative of labour market conditions. An increased amount of volatility will remain in the LFS estimates from mid-2023 and throughout 2024, so we would advise caution when interpreting change involving those periods. We recommend using LFS estimates as part of our suite of labour market indicators, alongside Workforce Jobs, Claimant Count, and Pay As You Earn Real Time Information (PAYE RTI) estimates. 

Alongside the labour market publication in May 2025 we are publishing an article on LFS quality, including coherence. The timing of this quality article coincides with the first period of data incorporating the full impact of some of the larger changes made from January 2024, now fully reflected in estimates for January to March 2025. The article provides information about current response rates, trends and known biases in LFS data and provides users with information to better understand the current quality of the data.

For further information, please see our article on Impact of reweighting on Labour Force Survey key indicators: December 2024.

Official statistics in development

These statistics are labelled as "official statistics in development". Until September 2023, these were called "experimental statistics". Read more about the change in our Guide to official statistics in development.

The ongoing challenges with response rates and levels mean that LFS-based labour market statistics are now official statistics in development until further review. This is also in line with the letter from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), stating that LFS statistics should not be published as accredited official statistics until the OSR has reviewed them.