Despite unemployment hovering at its lowest rate since 1974, around 4 million people are now working while living in poverty thanks to slow wage growth and cuts to in-work benefits. Coronavirus: Support for households finances. All rights reserved. Universal basic income trial fails to help people back into work, Archbishop of Canterbury warns poverty will rise under no-deal Brexit, You may not agree with our views, or other users’, but please respond to them respectfully, Swearing, personal abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia and other discriminatory or inciteful language is not acceptable, Do not impersonate other users or reveal private information about third parties, We reserve the right to delete inappropriate posts and ban offending users without notification. The gradual opening up of the economy in the summer meant the number of job vacancies rose by 146,000 over the three months to October to 525,000, but the total was still down by 278,000 on a year earlier. Download full report Download ‘Poverty in the UK: statistics’ report (905 KB, PDF) Supporting documents. Poverty rates are highest for people in households where the head of the household is from the Pakistani or Bangladeshi ethnic groups and lowest for those from White ethnic groups. Library briefing paper on income inequality in the UK, DWP Households Below Average Income report, Unemployment – International Comparisons: Key Economic Indicators, Employment by Country of Birth and Nationality. Source data for ‘By ethnicity, disability and gender’ (CSV). The briefing compares data from 1997 to 2020 and explains how figures for employment by nationality can differ to those for employment by country of birth. This accounts for differences among households such as costs of childcare and disability, savings and access to assets. While the furlough has helped limit the increase in joblessness, the ONS said its latest estimates showed 1.62 million people were unemployed in the July to September period of 2020, up 243,000 on the quarter and 318,000 on the year. The proportion of the population in work hit its joint-highest on record in March at 76.1 per cent, partly driven by an increasing number of women in employment. In the “plausible illustrative economic scenario” for UK growth and jobs in the report, it said GDP could fall by 25% in the second quarter and unemployment more than double to around 9%. We use some cookies that should allow you to share content from our website on your social media platforms and email. The ONS said the 181,000 quarterly increase in redundancies was unprecedented and helped push up the UK unemployment rate from 4.1% to 4.8% between the second and third quarters of 2020. Data is shown separately for White British people and all other White people (‘White Other’ ethnic group). Are you sure you want to delete this comment? Office for National Statistics. ‘By ethnicity (White and Other than White)’ (CSV) And give unions the freedom to enter every workplace to negotiate fair pay rises.“. Unemployment is expected to almost double to 7.5 percent by the end of the year, according to the Bank of England. The published statistics also allow government to monitor estimates on a range of issues between Censuses. Threadneedle Street also undertook a stress test of major high street banks and concluded they could withstand the onset of the deepest recession for at least a century, having improved their resilience since the financial crisis. A low income measure can also be combined with an assessment of whether households have access to key goods and services, for a measure of low income and material deprivation. Applying pressure on banks to continue lending, it warned failure to lend to businesses would exacerbate the economic collapse and would prove to be self-defeating as banks would face bigger losses as more companies failed. However, the gap is narrowing. ‘By ethnicity and area (White and Other than White)’ (CSV) “The government must raise the minimum wage to £10 as quickly as possible. But even if this were to materialise – and it is certainly not guaranteed – Britain is likely to be living with a legacy of high unemployment for some years to come.”. But striking a positive note, he said growth could rapidly recover next year, with Britain bouncing back faster than from the 2008 global financial crisis. ‘By ethnicity over time’ (CSV) Ruth Gregory, a UK economist at consultancy Capital Economics, said further increases in unemployment were in prospect, predicting that the jobless rate would peak at 9% following the end of the furlough scheme next spring. Employment in the UK: October 2020 Estimates of employment, unemployment and economic inactivity for the UK. Want an ad-free experience?Subscribe to Independent Premium.