Divorced from British society

It is striking how many British households of working age have no direct personal connection with the labour market. In that respect at least they are marginalised from mainstream society.

According to statistics published this week by the Office for National Statistics some 18.8% of working age households (where at least one person is aged 16-64) have no one in work. That is 3.88m households are workless out of a total of 20.57m. Breaking the workless figure down further it includes 5.41m adults and 1.84m children.

It is particularly noteworthy that in three quarters of workless households all of those of working age are inactive rather than classified as unemployed. Everyone is unemployed in only 15% of such households while there is a mixture of unemployed and inactive in the remaining 10%. Almost half of those households who live on council estates are workless.

The proportion of workless households rose during the recent recession but appears to have been on a slightly downward trend since at least 1996.

Some 370,000 households, or 1.8% of the total, have never included a working adult.