Growth in working households, say ONS figures

30 Aug 17

Increasing numbers of people live in a household where at least one person is in work, the Office for National Statistics has found.

In its latest data on working and workless households it said that in April to June this year of the 20.7m households with at least one member aged 16 to 64, there were 57.8% with all such working age residents in employment.

This was an increase of 166,000 over the past year, equivalent to 0.8 percentage points.

There were a further 5.7m households - 27.7% of the total - with at least one working and one workless adult, a decrease of 85,000 or 0.4 percentage points over the year.

Households with residents of working age but none in work came to 3.0m - 14.5% of the total - a decrease of 89,000 people over the year, equivalent to 0.4 percentage points.

There was a decrease of 35,000 to 258,000 over the past year in the number of households in which no adult had ever worked.

The ONS said the growth in working households had been driven partly by a 1.5 percentage points increase in the proportion of lone parents working, which had risen to 68.0%.

In the April to June period, the percentage of all households that were workless and with dependent children was 8.9% (714,000), down by 0.5 percentage points on the same period a year ago.

Children in lone-parent families were the most likely to be living in workless households, with 35.1% of them in this situation.

This was, though, a 2.2 percentage points fall against the position a year ago and continued what the ONS said was a "general trend of decreases" since records began.

ONS figures earlier this month showed unemployment figures were down to a 42-year-low, with the UK jobless rate down to 4.4% between April and June this year from 4.9% a year earlier.

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