Britain’s worklessness disaster

Whilst Jeremy Hunt’s cut to National Insurance may grab the headlines, the real story of today’s Budget was hidden in the official forecasts accompanying it.

These forecasts point to a disaster for Britain’s labour force. The UK already had one of the worst post-lockdown workforce recoveries in the world, with a record 2.8 million people off work due to long-term sickness. But today the OBR said things are only going to get worse.

The OBR gave the Chancellor credit for expanding childcare provision, attempting to reform welfare and reducing personal tax rates – which it says will boost the labour supply by 300,000 people.

But the forecasters said ‘the post-pandemic rise in economic inactivity is likely to prove more persistent than we previously thought’. They pointed to figures first reported by The Spectator which show a third of the working-age inactive population cite long-term illness as the reason they can’t look for work.