We are living in collective denial. The economic inactivity data keep flooding in, each set almost inconceivably more dire than the one before.
Vast swathes of the population aren’t working, millions are deemed too sick to even contemplate it, our welfare system is out of control, and yet no one wants to bring any of it to an end.
It has just been reported that over 9.5m Brits were out of work and not looking for a job between April and June this year.
In response, the new Labour Government followed its usual script: blame the Tories, then offer platitudes on “making work pay” and “transforming skills”, neither of which is likely to solve the problem that too many people are choosing life on welfare over gainful employment.
Like a frog in boiling water, the full effects of this economic and social disaster may not be apparent until it is too late.
Entire regions are already in the grips of a worklessness epidemic, home to a culture where not working is normal. A quarter of Blackpool is on out-of-work benefits. In Birmingham, Glasgow and Liverpool, it’s around a fifth. The economic inactivity rate in Wales is over 28pc.
And how does the political class react? There’s the growing hostility towards business, with Labour bleating about the miseries of employment under “unscrupulous” bosses and the need for more worker “rights”.
There may well be circ*mstances in which greater flexibility benefits both parties, which is why millions of voluntary agreements are already in place. But ushering in a raft of new entitlements will come with costs: somewhere, someone will pay.
Then there was the Tory answer of importing foreign workers to fill shortages and grow the economy. But this served to exacerbate our chronic housing shortage and further overload our creaking infrastructure, while concealing the true scale of our worklessness crisis.
Well, the figures are in: more than a million foreign workers have come to Britain since the eve of Covid. In the same period, some 830,000 UK-born people have dropped out of work.
These problems should have been cleared up years ago. Instead they’ve been allowed to fester, becoming ever more costly and complex.
There’s the £300bn we are now spending a year on welfare, including pensions, as its core function strays far beyond providing a safety net for the most vulnerable. The benefits system is at risk of metastasising into another, no less dysfunctional, NHS – a public service which anyone can use if they feel like it, funded by the taxpayer.
It was reported earlier this year that 3.9m people are receiving out-of-work benefits without having to even look for a job – twice as many as the number of claimants who must try to find work. In addition to the up-front bill, there is the lost tax revenue, and the lost productive capacity in the economy.
Yet welfare reform is political kryptonite: when the Tories announced plans to tighten the Work Capability Assessment last year, Labour immediately pledged to reverse them. Activists lambasted the changes as “cynical” and “horrendously dangerous”.
Even if the Work and Pensions Secretary gets it right, this is what they’re up against. There will always be losers, and their voices, or those lobbying on their behalf, will always be louder than those not personally affected. And if ministers get it wrong, it could be career suicide.
Then there’s the staggeringly high rates of people now suffering from mental illness, and the seeming belief that conditions such as anxiety must always preclude work. In 1992, some 2pc of working age adults claimed disability benefits. Last year, that number reached 6pc, with the rise mostly down to an increase in claims for mental ill-health – which are now the main disability cited by nearly half of claimants.
Some of this increase may be the result of genuine stress and anxiety experienced following a worldwide pandemic and soaring inflation. But there have also been strong financial incentives, namely the relative value of getting on PIP, for people to shift their claims.
Consider also the new figures showing that the number of parents claiming disability living allowance for children has surged by 200,000 since lockdown. The parents of more than 730,000 under-18s are now receiving the tax-free benefit to help care for their children – up 40pc since 2019 and fuelled by an increase in conditions such as autism and ADHD.
Support groups say these conditions have long been underdiagnosed, and awareness ought to be welcomed. They may be right, but the drastic increase should perhaps give some pause for thought.
Discussion about ADHD is now widespread on social media, with #ADHD attracting more than 20bn hits on TikTok alone. As the population becomes more aware of the symptoms of neurodiversity and mental illness, we may be beginning to see people interpret their experiences and emotions through this lens, at a time when the young are already being taught that “wellbeing” and “work-life” balance should be prioritised above all else.
Ronald Reagan famously quipped that “status quo is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’”. Our problem is that the mess is going to get much worse. There has been a cultural shift, exacerbated by lockdown, towards believing that the world – or the taxpayer – owes us a living.
Of the 9.5m who were economically inactive between April and June, 7.7m said they did not want a job. Perhaps this was inevitable, after people were paid 80pc of their wages to loaf around for the best part of two years.
Even those who do work are often less productive than they used to be: total output from public servants is now 6.8pc lower than it was before the pandemic, despite huge increases in spending.
Some 53pc of the population are net recipients from the state. Half of us are taking out more than we put in. And who pays? The hard-working, the aspirational, those who, as politicians relish saying, “want to get on in life”.
The trouble is, as our worklessness crisis deepens these people are fast shrinking in number.
