Working and workless households in the UK: October to December 2022

• Of the estimated 21.3 million households (where at least one member is aged 16 to 64 years) in the UK, 59.1% had all household members aged 16 years and over in employment during October to December 2022, down 0.1 percentage points compared with the same period last year.

• There was an estimated 27.1% of households with a mix of at least one working and one workless adult, up 0.1 percentage points compared with the same period last year.

• There was an estimated 13.7% of households where no member of the household was in employment, unchanged compared with the same period last year.

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, it looks at:

• the number of people in employment in the household

• the number of people unemployed in the household

• the number of people economically inactive in the household

All estimates in this release are not seasonally adjusted and all comparisons should be carried out on an annual basis (for example, by comparing April to June periods with April to June periods or October to December periods with October to December periods). Comparisons made in the datasets associated with this release are between the latest available period, October to December 2022, and October to December 2021.

Coronavirus

For information on how labour market data sources are affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, see our Coronavirus and the effects on UK labour market statistics article, published on 6 May 2020. This article details some of the challenges that we have faced in producing estimates.

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

The population totals used for the latest LFS estimates use projected growth rates from Real-Time Information (RTI) data for UK, EU and non-EU populations based on 2021 patterns. The total population used for the LFS therefore does not take into account any changes in migration, birth rates, death rates, and so on, since June 2021. This means levels estimates may be under- or over-estimating the true values and should be used with caution. Estimates of rates will, however, be robust.