Children living in long-term workless households in the UK: 2019

• In 2019, 1 million children (7.8%) lived in long-term workless households.

• 79.8% of children in workless households lived in long-term workless households.

• The South East had the lowest percentage of children in long-term workless households.

• The North East had the highest percentage of children in long-term workless households.

Child

A person aged 0 to 15 years (that is, who has not yet reached their 16th birthday).

Household

A single person, or a group of people living at the same address who have the address as their only or main residence and either share one main meal a day or share living accommodation (or both). In this bulletin, households are further defined as where at least one person is aged 16 to 64 years.

Workless household

A household where all members aged 16 years or over are currently economically inactive or unemployed.

Long-term workless household

A subset of workless households defined by adding a condition to capture the duration of inactivity for the adults in the household.

The definition of a long-term workless household is therefore a workless household where all adults, aged 16 and over, are currently economically inactive or unemployed (workless), and these adults left their last job at least 12 months ago or have never worked (in a paid job).

Student household

A households where at least one person is aged 16 to 64 years and which contains only people in full-time education aged between 16 and 24 years. Communal establishments, for example student halls of residence, are not included within the sample frame of the Annual Population Survey (APS) datasets. Students living in communal establishments during term times are instead captured via the parental address.

Workless household (excluding student households)

Excludes those households that contain only people aged between 16 and 24 years and in full-time education.

Long-term workless household (excluding student households)

A long-term workless household (excluding student households) excludes those households containing only people in full-time education aged between 16 and 24 years.

Unemployed

The definition is specified by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Unemployed people are those without a job who have been actively seeking work in the past four weeks and are available to start work in the next two weeks. It also includes those who are out of work but have found a job and are waiting to start it in the next two weeks.

Economically inactive

People not in employment, who have not been seeking work within the last four weeks and/or are unable to start work within the next two weeks.

Data sources

These statistics have been produced using the Annual Population Survey (APS) household dataset for the period January to December 2019 unless otherwise stated. They only contain households where at least one person is aged 16 to 64 years and all people aged 16 years and over are unemployed or economically inactive and had not worked for at least 12 months.

These estimates add a definition of long-term worklessness of adults in a household. This means that they are a subset of the number of children living in workless households, which was previously published in Workless households for regions across the UK: 2019 using the APS household dataset. It should be noted that the lead statistic for the number of children in workless households is derived from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) household dataset, which is published each quarter.

Datasets containing estimates for children living in long-term workless households are provided by a range of characteristics, such as combined economic status of adults in the household, and age of child for the latest available data, covering January to December 2019, and as a time series from 2006 to 2019.

Accuracy and reliability of survey estimates

The figures in this statistical bulletin come from a survey of households. Surveys gather information from a sample rather than from the whole population. The sample is designed carefully to allow for this, and to be as accurate as possible given practical limitations such as time and cost constraints, but results from sample surveys are always estimates, not precise figures. This means that they are subject to a margin of error, which can have an impact on how changes in the numbers should be interpreted, especially in the short term.

Quality information

More quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) QMI.

The Annual Population Survey (APS) is derived by using a subset of interviews from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) plus a number of additional interviews. Quality and Methodology Information reports for the LFS also apply to the APS:

Further information about the LFS and APS is available from the Labour Force Survey – user guide and the Labour Force Survey performance and quality monitoring reports.

Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available from the UK Statistics Authority website.