For first time, number of jobless homes falls below 3m

THE number of households where every adult is out of work has plunged below 3million for the first time, official figures have revealed.

The Office for National Statistics said only 14.5 per cent of homes, or 2.9million, were completely workless in the three months to June.

This is a fall of 89,000 over the last year – and the lowest level since records began.

The workless population – a high proportion of whom are likely to be dependent on state handouts – now stands at a record low of 4.1million.

At the same time, the number of UK households where everyone over the age of 16 is in employment hit a new high – increasing by 166,000 to 11.9million.

It means just one in ten Britons of working age, including students, now live in so-called workless homes.

Yesterday the Government hailed the figures as a triumph for its economic policy. The fall in the number of those dependant on benefits follows years of rising employment and efforts by David Cameron’s government to make work more lucrative than relying on handouts.

A series of measures under former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith included keeping handouts below the level of average incomes and bringing in the Universal Credit system.

The wave of adults entering into employment has especially benefited children, according to the ONS figures. The number of children living in workless households fell by 53,000 to a record low of 1.3million, while a high of 7.3million under-15s lived in homes where every adult worked. A record 68 per cent of lone parents were in employment. And the number of children in homes where no adult had ever worked fell to 172,000, the lowest since before 1997.

Since 2010 the number of workless households has fallen by nearly a million. Unemployment is at its lowest level since 1975, at 4.4 per cent.

Last night Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke said: ‘ With record levels of employment, more people ... now have the ability to support themselves and their families.

‘What’s particularly great news is

‘What welfare reforms were all about’

that lone parents are more likely to be in work than ever before, and we’re going further by making sure parents have access to the right support.’

Mr Duncan Smith, the architect of the welfare shake-up, said: ‘I am pleased as punch. This is what the reforms were all about.

‘More people than ever before are in employment, which means they have a greater chance of earning more money and controlling their lives.’

The figures are drawn from the Labour Force Survey. The ONS looks only at households where there is at least one person aged 16 to 64. Being in a workless household does not necessarily mean being unemployed. It also includes those considered ‘economically inactive’, such as students, retirees and disabled people.

ANYONE who doubts the brutish Stalinism of Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘kinder, gentler’ politics ( his senior aide recently lamented the passing of East Germany) should observe the ruthless purging of Labour’s leader in Scotland. Kezia Dugdale denied having been defenestrated, but she was damned from the moment she criticised her leader during the election campaign. In Corbyn’s Labour, any dissent must be mercilessly crushed.

And as there’s no female candidate to succeed her, all of Labour’s top elected positions will now be held by men. So despite their pious commitment to equal opportunity, it’s still jobs for the boys. THE Mail has always greatly admired Iain Duncan Smith’s passionate crusade to get the long-term unemployed out of welfare and into work. With today’s news that the number of workless households has fallen to a record low, his unstinting efforts to break the corrosive cycle of benefit dependency – against constant opposition from the Left – are thoroughly vindicated. He should take a bow.