What are workless households?
The workless household percentage measures the difference between households where at least one member is 16 or above who is in employment and all households where at least one member is aged between 16-64. The aim of this analysis is twofold. The first is to examine the difference between workless households in North East LEP and England Excluding London; the second is to examine workless household differences within North East LEP Local Authorities.
The latest workless households data
In the Jan 21-Dec 21 twelve-month period, 18.8% of households in the North East LEP area were workless. This compares to 13.7% in England excluding London, a 5.1 percentage point (pp) difference.
Trends for the percentage of workless households decreased year on year in the North East and England excluding London between 2011 to 2017. In the North East there was a brief increase in workless households in 2018 and 2019, but this dropped significantly in 2020. Latest data in 2021 shows the workless households value in the North East to be at its second lowest in 17 years (since this dataset was available).
Compared to other regional authorities, the North East workless households percentage is high. The bar chart shows that in 2021 this value was the highest in the North East, with the lowest being in the West of England; lower than the North East level by 9.4pp. Trends between the last two years have been mixed across comparators. Four areas including North East had an increase in the percentage of workless households, and four areas had a decrease. The D2N2 area saw the highest increase (by 1.8pp) and the North East had the second highest increase (1.5pp). Sheffield City Region had the largest decrease between 2020 and 2021 (-1.5pp).
The local authorities in the North East with the largest increase in workless households were North Tyneside (3.4pp), Newcastle upon Tyne (3.2pp), and Gateshead (2.5pp). South Tyneside (-0.7pp) and Sunderland (-0.6pp) both had decreases.
These statistics are based on the location of residence rather than workplace. Some volatility can be attributed to the data being based on surveys (the Labour Force Survey) with relatively small sample sizes for smaller areas.