UK Economic Inactivity Rate (16–64)

## What this measures

The share of people aged 16–64 who are neither working nor looking for work: students, carers, retirees and the long-term sick.

## Why it matters

The rise in inactivity since the pandemic, largely from long-term sickness, is one of the UK's biggest economic problems.

## How to read it

Higher means a smaller labour force. Compare with the employment rate.

## What it does not say

Labour Force Survey figures are three-month averages labelled by the last month, so they move slowly and lag. The survey has had low response rates since 2023 and ONS has warned that its estimates are less reliable; it is being replaced by a Transformed LFS.

## Source

Office for National Statistics, series LF2S (dataset LMS), "Economic inactivity rate (aged 16 to 64, %): SA". Palanor reads it from the ONS website's time-series data every day.

Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0.