Households where no one works fall to a record low

THE number of homes where every adult is jobless and on benefits has plunged to an historic low, official figures revealed yesterday.

Fewer than one in ten Britons of working age – excluding students – now live in so- called workless households.

The full scale of the workless population – a high proportion of whom are likely to be dependent on state handouts – now stands at 3.9million – or 9.7 per cent of all homes.

The figure is a 25 per cent fall since the height of the financial crisis in 2009 and the lowest since records began. The flood of adults into employment has particularly benefited children, according to the breakdown published by the Office for National Statistics.

It said the share of homes with children under 16 where no one works dropped to 9.1 per cent in the last three months of 2016, down from 10.5 per cent a year earlier. The number of households that have children but no one works has dropped below 750,000 to 726,000.

The decline of the benefit-dependent population follows years of rising employment and efforts by David Cameron’s government to make work pay.

A series of measures under former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith aimed to cut work- lessness included keeping handouts below the level of average incomes and the Universal Credit system. The ONS figures showed that the peak for worklessness came in 2009, when there were 5.17million people in workless homes – 13.1 per cent of all households.

The share of workless households with children that year was 14.3 per cent – or 1.1million homes.

The good news for ministers came as a report claimed incomes will stagnate over the next two years, plunging 400,000 pensioners and more than a million children into poverty. The research, produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said that by 2022 average household incomes will be nearly a fifth lower than would ‘reasonably have been expected’ in 2007.

Rowntree chief executive Campbell Robb, a former Labour government adviser, said it meant millions of families were ‘teetering on a precipice’. However, ministers remained buoyed by evidence that showed growing numbers of working families and falling benefit dependency.

Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green said: ‘More parents now have the opportunity to find work and enjoy the dignity and security of having a regular wage.’

The ONS said the rise has been partly driven by lone parents working. The share of single parents in work rose from 55.4 per cent in 2004 to 67.9 per cent last year.

‘Dignity of a regular wage’