Children living in long-term workless households in the UK: 2025

• In 2025, 1.3 million children (10.1%) lived in long-term workless households, up 0.7 percentage points on the previous year.
• Of those children in workless households, 85.2% lived in long-term workless households.
• The lowest percentage of children in long-term workless households was in the South East (6.1%).
• The highest percentage of children in long-term workless households was in the North East (17.0%).

Annual Population Survey (APS) household datasets are used for the analysis 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 number of children living in workless households (households where no adult is in employment) and long-term workless households (households where no adult has worked in the previous 12 months).

The APS and APS household datasets have not been reweighted to the new populations. Consequently, all APS household tables remain weighted to the previous 2021 population totals, which will be inconsistent with those used for the Labour Force Survey (LFS) in the latest periods.

For a comparison of our labour market data sources and the main differences, see our Comparison of labour market data sources methodology.

Official statistics

APS household estimates are now considered official statistics. Since late 2023, we have taken a series of actions to improve the quality of the LFS, including:

• returning to face-to-face interviewing
• increasing respondent incentives
• reinstating the sample boost
• recruiting additional interviewers
• updating the survey weighting

These measures have improved response levels from their lowest point to levels similar to those seen before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

On 11 August 2026, the ONS wrote a letter to the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) about the designation of LFS and APS outputs. Outputs derived from the LFS and APS are currently official statistics in development and will move to official statistics. The ONS will not be seeking reaccreditation. Instead, our priority is for outputs based on the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), as the online-first sustainable replacement for the LFS and APS to achieve the standards required to become accredited official statistics and for OSR to consider their accreditation at the earliest opportunity.