Britain faces worst sickness crisis since 1990s as millions quit workforce ‘legacy of pandemic’ blamed as illness-related inactivity climbs to 2.7 million.

Britain is on the cusp of the worst sickness crisis on record following a post-lockdown surge in worklessness that is driving a “rapid rise” in benefit claims.

Analysis by the Resolution Foundation showed the share of working-age people who are economically inactive owing to long-term sickness had climbed “consistently” over the past four-and-a-half years from two million in the summer of 2019 to 2.7 million today.

This is the second-longest sustained rise in sickness-related inactivity on record and just one month shy of the record set in the 1990s.

The think tank described the sharp rise in the number of people who are neither in work nor looking for a job as the “legacy of the pandemic”.

Louise Murphy, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said Britons were getting older and sicker, which did not bode well for reversing the trend.

She added: “We can’t be sure of what the future will hold. But we definitely don’t see any indication that this is starting to turn a corner and go down.

“So all that it would take is another couple of months of increases and things will be looking even worse than in the 1990s.”

The UK is still the only G7 economy where employment is yet to recover to pre-lockdown rates, and a total of 9.25 million people of working age are now classed as economically inactive.

The Resolution Foundation noted that 90pc of the increase in overall economic inactivity had been driven by younger adults aged between 16 and 24 and older adults aged between 50 and 64 since the start of the pandemic.

It said the rise in ill-health had a “knock-on impact” on welfare claims.

“There has also been a rapid rise in the number of working-age adults claiming sickness and disability-related benefits,” the Foundation said, adding that people in their early 20s are now more likely than those in their 30s or early 40s to be claiming benefits related to a health condition or disability.

Official projections by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published this week show spending on health and disability benefits is expected to rise by more than a third over the next five years from £65.7bn in 2023-24 to £90.9bn in 2028-29.

The Foundation said the most “striking” increase in benefit claims related to personal independence payments (PIP), which is now the main non-means-tested benefit for those with health conditions or disabilities. The benefit can be claimed by people both in and out of work, though OBR analysis suggests just 16pc of those who claim PIP are in work.

New PIP claims have increased 68pc between early 2020 and early 2024, according to the Foundation. Adults aged between 55 and 64 are the most likely group to be claiming PIP, with the most common conditions including osteoarthritis and anxiety.

However, the Foundation highlighted that the number of new PIP claims in England and Wales is up 138pc for 16-17-year-olds, and up 77pc for 18-24-year-olds.  

Ms Murphy said: “What’s striking is that on one end, we’ve got more young people out of work, particularly due to poor mental health. And we’ve also got a big number of older people aged 60 and over who again are struggling with poor health.

“I think that U shaped trend by age is what is worrying because for young people, we’re concerned that this will have a knock-on impact on their future career trajectory and earnings. And at the other end, if we have lots of people in later life who are not able to work they are therefore at risk of having low incomes.

“There is also the risk that we are then writing off people in their 50s and 60s.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/03/23/britain-worst-sickness-crisis-1990s-millions-quit-workforce/