6 million People Live In Homes Where No-One Is Working

Around six million people live in homes where no one is working, according to new figures.

The statistics, from the Office for National Statistics, reveal that 4.3m adults and 1.77m children reside in welfare-dependent homes. The number of homes in which no one works has risen by 43,000 since 2003.

James Clappison, a Tory welfare reform spokesman, told the Daily Mail: "If nearly 1.8m children are growing up in households with no one in work, they are potentially being condemned to a cycle of low achievement and unemployment."

Debbie Scott, chief executive at Tomorrow's People, an independent charity that helps the long-term unemployed back into work, told Recruiter: "We are acutely aware that there are unacceptable numbers of households with people that have never worked. We need to work with the whole family in getting them back to work. We are about to commission a research project this to identify some strategies to look into this problem."

Richard Bacon, a Tory MP on the committee, which acts as a watchdog over public spending, said: "The Department for Work and Pensions does not know how many people are out of work by choice, rather than by chance.

"Properly targeted help must be put in place for those who want to work. Only then will the Government be able to flush out the shirkers who are sticking up two fingers at hard-working families and treating the benefit system like a cash machine."

The committee's report pointed out that the burden of worklessness is being borne by the country at a time when an expanding economy has produced record levels of employment. The proportion of working age people with jobs has reached a historic high of just under 75 per cent.

At the same time, the official unemployment tally says only a few more than 800,000 are out of a job and able to work.

However evidence has been piling up that millions of Britons have been content to spend entire lives on benefits while four out of every five new jobs have been taken by immigrants.

Author:
Chris Crawford is the MD of BD Recruitment a specialist recruiter for creative account manager jobs, marketing account manager jobs and technical project manager jobs, based in Manchester, UK.