Working and workless households in the UK: July to September 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.

• Increased volatility will remain in the estimates from mid-2023 and throughout 2024, so we would advise caution when interpreting change involving these 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 21.85 million households (where at least one member is aged 16 to 64 years) in the UK, 59.2% had all household members aged 16 years and over in employment during July to September 2025.

• There were an estimated 26.7% of households with a mix of 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 analyses of family or household characteristics. For all analyses 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. Increased volatility will remain in the LFS estimates from mid-2023 and throughout 2024, so we would advise caution when interpreting change involving these 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 September 2025, we published our Labour Force Survey quality update: September 2025 article. The article provides users with information about current response rates and known biases in LFS data to help them better understand the current quality of the data.

Estimates from January to March 2025 include the full effect of the improvements in LFS data collection and sampling methods introduced from January 2024, and we are continuing our efforts to further improve the response to the survey. Estimates may therefore be subject to the effect of these further improvements, which may have an ongoing effect on the survey.

For further information, please see our 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.