PRESS RELEASE: Three million locked out: poor quality jobs leave Britain’s long-term sick stuck on the sidelines

New research from healthy working lives campaigners Timewise has revealed how poor-quality frontline jobs lock nearly 3 million sick and disabled Britons out of the job market.

The Timewise research, which analyses five years of UK Labour Force data, reveals that:

• Just 2.5% of those who are economically inactive due to long-term sickness or disability make it into work each year.
• Over half of these jobs last fewer than four months.
• Those who do find work too often end up in physically demanding, insecure frontline roles – precisely the kinds of jobs many disabled people say they cannot sustain.
• Young people are experiencing the fastest rise in worklessness due to ill health.

The analysis reveals a stark mismatch between the needs of the long-term inactive and the kinds of jobs that are available to them. Most (56%) who re-enter the labour market go into ‘frontline’ roles (including labourers, factory workers, couriers, cleaners and care workers). But many disabled people say the jobs they feel least able to do involve being on their feet all day, working shifts that can’t be changed, or commuting or travelling as part of the job.

The UK’s ‘two tier’ workforce, where better-paid office workers benefit from a high degree of flexibility and autonomy while frontline workers face insecurity and unpredictability, exacerbates the problem.

Despite the challenges, nearly one third of people (30%) who are economically inactive due to disability say they want to find work, a potential force of 850,000 workers.

The report sounds an alarm about young people in particular, who have seen the fastest rise in economic inactivity due to ill-health. Once people fall out of work, unless they find alternative employment that meets their needs within two years, it is very unlikely that they will ever return to work – risking a tidal wave of economic inactivity that hampers the economy for years to come.

Ahead of the Labour Party Conference, Timewise is calling on the Government to make frontline work the central focus of its efforts to tackle long term inactivity, and to incentivise employers to offer flexible jobs that better fit the needs of young people and those living with poor health and disability.

Clare McNeil, Chief Executive of Timewise said:

“Nearly 3 million people are currently stuck on the sidelines of our economy, many keen to work but unable to find jobs that are right for them. Pushing people into insecure, physical, inflexible work when they are already challenged by disability or mental health problems is futile – these jobs don’t work and they don’t last. Government and employers must work together to create jobs that meet the needs of the long-term unemployed, this one of the best ways to tackle worklessness, simultaneously boosting our economic fortunes and changing lives.

“Badly-designed jobs are contributing to a rising epidemic of inactivity amongst the young, who have the lowest-paid, most insecure and inflexible jobs of all. Our young people need flexible, fairly-paid and secure work, getting this right now will secure their participation in the economy for decades to come.”

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said:

“We welcome this research which highlights the persistent challenge of poor-quality employment. It is concerning that long-term sick and disabled people who go back into frontline roles, find it difficult to stay in them because of a lack of flexibility and poor working conditions.

“There is a pressing need to improve the quality of jobs to support those out of work into higher quality employment and prevent those in work from falling out of work due to ill health. High-quality jobs that are well designed are essential for improving health and reducing economic inactivity.

“The NHS itself has a pivotal role to play in improving not just the quality of its own frontline roles and the NHS Confederation’s new Work and Health Network is supporting both NHS organisations and wider system partners in helping to address the worrying rise in health-related economic inactivity.”

Ahead of Sir Charlie Mayfield’s Keep Britain Working review, due to report this autumn, Timewise calls on the Government to make three central reforms to create better jobs for the long-term unemployed:

1. Introduce cross-industry Healthy Work Standards, building on the Employment Rights Bill to offer clear guidelines for the design of high-quality jobs.

2. Introduce Norwegian-style Workforce Innovation Agreements, which would reward employers for hitting targets on sickness, retention and return to work with access to preferential procurement, business support and innovation grants.

3. Re-purpose existing Government support to focus on job quality goals, for example building job design and in-work support into the DWP Access to Work offer.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

• In total more than 9 million people aged between 16 and 64 are economically inactive (neither in work nor actively looking for a job). The recent rise in inactivity is due to an increase in those neither looking for work or able to work due to long-term sickness which has reached 2.83 million, up from around 2 million people in 2019.

• The increase in economic inactivity in the UK is out of step with other G7 countries. The UK consistently had one of the lowest inactivity rates in the G7 before the pandemic. Since then, inactivity has risen in the UK and US but fallen across the rest of the G7 countries.

• The Timewise report “Healthy by design? Why better jobs for all should be a goal for industrial policy” is available to read here. The findings are based on new analysis of five years of the ONS Labour Force Survey.

• These are the job categories of long-term sick economically inactive people who make it back into work, compared to the proportion of those job categories in the whole economy: