Illness is stopping Britons from coming back to work
The ranks of the sick have swollen since the pandemic
During the 2010s the British economy grew not by becoming much more productive but by keeping people in work for longer. Of the 4m or so extra workers who became employed in 2010-20, two-thirds had lived for more than half a century. Since the pandemic many of these veterans have gone absent without leave. New labour-market data, covering the three months to the end of November 2022, show that there were roughly 300,000 more inactive workers over the age of 50 compared with the first quarter of 2020.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Sick or retired”
Britain January 28th 2023
- Britain’s carmaking industry is increasingly under threat
- Britain is beginning to protect its 1970s leisure centres
- Rishi Sunak’s hapless government
- Britain has fewer hospital beds than almost any other rich country
- Illness is stopping Britons from coming back to work
- How to conduct a sex survey
- Blat, the Soviet art of getting by, comes to Britain
From the January 28th 2023 edition
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