Maps shows UK regions with highest numbers of people without jobs | Personal Finance | Finance

Coming barely a year apart, the coronavirus pandemic and the surging inflation behind the cost-of-living crisis have thrown the UK’s job market into disarray. Millions have been forced to shun gainful employment due to long-term sickness, unable to access treatment from a healthcare system locked in a pay stalemate. The Government desperately needs all this cleared up to smash the dire economic forecasts for the year, but where have the most people dropped out of the workforce? Check Express.co.uk’s map below to find out.

A person is classed as economically inactive if they are of working age – between 16 and 64 – and are neither working nor seeking work in the near future, differing in this way from the unemployed.

Between December 2022 and February 2023, just under 8.8 million people in the UK fitted this description – 21.1 percent of the general population.

People become economically inactive for a variety of reasons. A large segment is made up of university students, numbering over two million, while those opting for early retirement make up a portion of it, too.

The category counted just over 9.5 million UK residents back in 2011, falling sharply over the following decade. Coronavirus, however, reversed this trend in a big way. Since the even of the pandemic, numbers lept back up by 500,000 as long-term sickness became the most common cause for dropping out of the workforce.

Those over the age of 50 are leading this trend, with poorer access to healthcare over the past year and NHS treatment delays soared.

The economic inactivity rate varies significantly by UK region. Northern Ireland posted the highest figure at 26.2 percent – meaning over a quarter of all 16 to 64-year-olds are out of the workforce. In the South East, the rate was just 17.7 percent.

By not participating in the workforce, not only does a person have less disposable income to spend on consumption, but the Treasury misses out on taxes. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has taken issue with this.

Addressing the over-50s in an interview for The Times newspaper in January, he said: “You can have an enormously rich life by continuing to make a contribution to the economy. It doesn’t just have to be about going to the golf course.” Last month’s Spring Budget was also christened as the “back to work” budget.

There are steady signs of improvement already – the economic inactivity rate falling in all regions since the September to November period, dropping by 0.4 percent UK-wide – mostly driven by students venturing into the job market.