UK Economic Inactivity Rate 2026: 20.9% Headline + Categories

The detail

Economic inactivity covers people of working age who are not in employment and have not been seeking work in the last four weeks or cannot start within two weeks - distinct from unemployment, which requires active jobsearch. ONS records the main reasons as long-term sickness, study, looking after family or home, retirement, temporary sickness and other reasons.

Long-term sickness is now the largest single reason. In May to July 2026, 2.78 million people aged 16 to 64 were inactive because of long-term sickness - 30.5% of the 9.12 million inactive. Just before the pandemic (December 2019 to February 2020) the figures were 2.12 million out of 8.45 million, or 25.1%.

The headline rate has barely moved over the past year: 21.0% in May to July 2025, 21.0% in February to April 2026 and 20.9% in May to July 2026. It remains 0.6 percentage points above its pre-pandemic level, and the number of inactive people is about 675,000 higher than in December 2019 to February 2020, partly because the working-age population itself has grown.

For policy and tax, inactivity matters because people outside the labour force pay little Income Tax or National Insurance on earnings, while spending on health and disability benefits scales with the long-term sick group. With Income Tax thresholds frozen, more of the tax burden falls on the roughly four in five working-age adults who are in the labour force.