Reasons for economic inactivity
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) asks respondents the main reason they are not looking for work or why they are unavailable for work. The main economically-inactive groups are:
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students
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people looking after the family and home
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the long-term sick and disabled
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the temporarily sick or injured
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retired people, and
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discouraged workers
The characteristics of people who are economically inactive vary depending on their reason for inactivity. For example, students tend to be young and at the start of their working lives. Those looking after the family and home tend to be female and of child-rearing age and retirees tend to be close to retirement age.
The LFS asks all working age people about the education they are currently receiving. Full-time students are categorised as those who attend school, university or college full-time or are on sandwich courses. Students represent a large number of potential workers, highly likely to participate in the labour market at some time in the future. Full-time education can be considered a positive economic activity and students who gain qualifications are more likely to have better employment prospects and access to higher earnings later in life.
Looking after the family and home is another reason for inactivity. It includes those people looking after children or caring for a dependant adult relative.
Those people who have a severe long-term illness or disability which prevents them from working fall into the long-term sick and disabled group. Long-term sickness and disability is self-classified by individual respondents.
Temporary sickness or injury, also self-classified by individual respondents, includes those people who are inactive due to sickness or injury for a limited period of time only.
Retired people form another core group. Economic inactivity rates are calculated as percentages of the working age population (16-59 for women and 16-64 for men). Therefore, only those people who retire before the state pension age are included in the inactive retired group. Clearly, the large majority of retirees are over the respective ages of 59 and 64. However this group, despite its size, is less important when considering the likelihood of these people entering into economic activity.
Finally, discouraged workers are those people who are inactive because they believe there is no job available for them.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes monthly statistics on economic inactivity by reason in the Labour Market Statistics First Release and in the Economic and Labour Market Review.
