Work and Worklessness Worklessness drops by 0.5% in 2003


The number of households without a paid working adult was down 89,000 to 3.04 million in the three months ended May 2003 compared with the previous year. This amounted to 15.9 per cent of working-age households (down from 16.4 per cent). Consequently, the number of workless households was still 194,000 lower than in 1998 when it was 17.5 per cent. Workless households in 2003 contained 4.3 million adults below state pension age and 1.8 million children under 16.

These figures were down slightly compared with a year earlier and down compared with five years earlier from 4.6 million adults and 2.2 million children. In 2003, almost one in six children lived in a household with no income from work. Among adults living in households with dependent children, 13 per cent had no earners in the household, compared with 10 per cent for adults living in households with no dependent children. Over two thirds of children in no-earner households (1.8 million) were in lone parent households.

Lone parents were much more likely to be non-earners than couples with dependent children. Some 37 per cent of lone parents with dependent children were not working (and did not have an adult child in work living with them). This is down from 41 per cent five years earlier. Among couples with dependent children, 5 per cent had no earners in the household, down from 6 per cent five years earlier. Among ethnic groups, working age people of Black African ethnicity were most likely to live in workless households (27 per cent).
This compared with 7 per cent of those from the Indian ethnic group and 11 per cent of those from the white group.