Workless Households (Hansard, 23 February 1998)

§ Mrs. Liddell

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the Chief Executive of the Office for National Statistics. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from Tim Holt to Mr. Archy Kirkwood, dated 23 February 1998: The Chancellor of the Exchequer has asked me to reply, as Director of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), to your recent question on the numbers of children in households where no-one works. 60W The ONS bases analyses of households with no-one in employment on working age households, that is households where there is at least one person of working age (i.e. a man aged 16–64 or a woman aged 16–59). The attached table shows estimates from the latest Labour Force Survey results. The economic status of the head of the household has been used to define the categories. Those who are unemployed under the ILO definition count as people who are: (a) without a paid job; (b) available to start work within the next two weeks and (c) have either looked for work in the last four weeks or are waiting to start a job already obtained. The other categories have been assigned according to the head of household's stated main reason for being economically inactive. The categories you specified do not cover all dependent children living in households with no-one in employment. An 'others' category has been included for information. This includes; the temporarily sick, discouraged workers, those awaiting the results of a job application, people looking after family and home (other than lone parents), and others with unspecified reasons.

	000
Number of dependent¹ children living in working age households² where no-one is employed which are headed by an adult who is:
ILO Unemployed	678
Economically inactive, and whose reason for inactivity is that they are:
Looking after family and home as a lone parent	1,179
Student	64
Retired³	43
Long-term sick or disabled	440
Others	216
¹ Dependent children are those aged 0–15 and 16–18 in full-time education.
² Households with at least one person of working age (i.e. men aged 16–64 and women aged 16–59).
³ Head of household of working age who states he/she is retired.

Source:

ONS, Labour Force Survey.