UK Economic Inactivity Rate
The share of working-age people who are neither working nor looking for work, includes students, carers, the long-term sick and early retirees.
20.9%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full UK economy27 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Updated automatically from official sources.Economic Inactivity Rate
Feb 1971 to Jun–Aug 2026
Source: ONS series LF2S (LMS) · aged 16 to 64, seasonally adjusted.
UK Economic Inactivity Rate in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In the UK, the economic inactivity rate fell by 0.1pp over the year to Jun–Aug 2026, from 21.0% in Jun–Aug 2025.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 20.7% in Nov 2025–Jan 2026 to 22.2% in May–Jul 2022.
Its average since Jan–Mar 1971 is 23.1%, and the latest reading is below that.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- ONS
- Series
- LF2S
- Frequency
- Monthly
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Seasonally adjusted
- Latest observation
- Jun–Aug 2026
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
Data refreshed 2026-11-06. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
More UK indicators
Latest readings. Open any one for its full history.
Rankings
See every country we track, side by side.