‘One in five UK households is jobless’

One in every five British households suffers the problem of having no individual in employment, shows a new study issued by GMB union, which is Britain’s third largest union.

The GMB analysis based on the Annual Population Survey data on households by combined economic activity status January-December 2010 from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), shows that there are 3.9 million workless households across the UK with no one aged 16 and over in employment out of a total number of 20.5 million households.

According to the figures, 18.9% of all households have the problem of including no employed person aged 16 to 64 across the UK.

Moreover, the research by the GMB union showed that the highest regional percentage belongs to the North East with 24%, followed by Wales with 22.5%, Northern Ireland with 22.4%, and the North West with 21%.

It also revealed that Liverpool has the worst figure, with 31.9% workless households in the UK, with 51,000 homes having no one working out of a total number of 159,700.

“The areas with the highest levels of households without work are those areas which were first devastated by the recessions in the 1980s and 1990s. They never properly recovered. They have now been hit again by the double whammy of the bankers’ recession and by Chancellor Osborne stalling the recovery leading to the region being mired in a new recession,” said GMB general secretary Paul Kenny.

Calling for the coalition government to implement policies that increase employment opportunities for people, he added, “I doubt if the electorate had any notion that a change of government would lead to a loss of 376,000 jobs across the UK in the public sector in the short time since the general election.”