What’s happened?
New official data, published last week, shows that the number of working-age Britons who are “economically inactive” due to sickness – that is, out of work and not looking for a job – stands at an all-time record of 2.6 million. That’s almost half a million more people than at the start of 2020, before the Covid pandemic, and 600,000 more than the figure in the late 2010s. This mass withdrawal from the workforce has helped fuel the UK’s labour shortages. It is also proving an expensive business in other ways. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility
