If the ‘record low’ number of children in ‘workless’ households is an improvement, how many are in poverty?
![The ONS concluded: ‘The broad picture since 1996 is one of an overall increase in the share of working households.’ [Image: Oli Scarff/Getty Images].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160902-job-centre-queue.png)
The ONS concluded: ‘The broad picture since 1996 is one of an overall increase in the share of working households.’ [Image: Oli Scarff/Getty Images].
It’s all very well saying that few children are living in households where both adults are unemployed – but that doesn’t mean they are well-off.
In fact, the policies of the Conservative government (and the Liberal Democrats, when the two parties were in coalition between 2010 and 2015), mean more children are in absolute poverty.
Two-thirds of children growing up in poverty live in a household where at least one adult works.
But they don’t want you to know that.
So they hide it with a convenient turn of phrase.
The number of children living in UK households where no adult is working has fallen to its lowest level since recent records began two decades ago, according to official data.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that 11% of British children lived in a workless household in 2016 – a fall of 0.8 percentage points on the previous year.
The latest drop continues a prolonged trend, with the percentage of children in workless households at its peak of 20% when modern records began in early 1996.
ONS figures show that the improvements under Labour governments after 1997 came to a halt during the deep recession of 2008-09 but then resumed under the coalition headed by David Cameron from 2010 onwards.
Source: Number of children in workless households hits record low | UK news | The Guardian
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Meaningless and dishonest nonsense from a dishonest government.
Yes Mike, this government is doing its best to separate the need to work in order to earn a living wage and to replace that with its importance as a social and psychological benefit. As usual its not hard to work out their motives nor why so many media barons are so keen to push the idea for all it’s worth.
Part timers and reduced hour workers are probably a large portion of these stats but can never get that visibility from the data..