2.5m out of work with health problems in UK

As reported by the BBC, more than 2.5m people in the UK are out of work because of a long-term health problem

The country is in its fourth year of sharply rising chronic illness.The highest rates are among 50- to 64-year-olds – but there have also been significant increases in some younger groups.

Although the link is not conclusive, the Bank of England has said record NHS waiting lists are likely to be playing a ‘significant role‘. And there are hints of this in Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.

Some of the largest increases are in people reporting mobility difficulties, such as leg and back problems, or heart and blood-pressure problems.

More younger people, in particular, say they are not in work because of different forms of mental illness.

And separate NHS waiting-list data for England paints a similar picture – with lengthy delays for knee and hip replacements, cardiac surgery and community mental-health care.

But the largest increase in long-term sickness is in the catch-all other health problems category, likely to include some of those with long Covid symptoms.

BBC News analysis of ONS Annual Population Survey (APS) data shows large variations in sickness, with high – and rising – rates among people who recently worked in transportation, retail or hospitality.

Jobs requiring more physical effort are more likely to lead to leg, back and other musculoskeletal disorders. While in solitary jobs, loneliness can be a real problem.

Workers in lower-paid, manual jobs tend to have poorer health and life expectancy in the first place. The reasons for this are complex, taking in everything from diet and smoking, to access to GPs, to the quality of local housing and green spaces.

The concern – from the Health Foundation and others – is the pandemic might have worsened some of these underlying health inequalities.

BBC News analysis of the latest ONS data, up to June 2022, also reveals stark differences across the country.

The highest long-term sickness rates are in Northern Ireland, north-east England and Wales.

But in London, which has a younger population, the numbers have actually fallen 3% since the start of the pandemic.

The largest rises were in the parts of the Midlands, south-east England and Wales. The East Midlands alone has seen a 21% jump, to a record 176,400 people.

Many of the 50- to 64-year-olds now reporting ill health as the main reason for being off work have already been out of the jobs market for several years for other reasons, such as early retirement or caring responsibilities, Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) research suggests.

If that’s the case, the impact on the economy from those missing workers may be not as bad as some had feared.

But it still leaves the government with two distinct problems – how to keep those people in a job when many employers desperately need more staff and how to deal with a population apparently becoming less healthy in the long term.