The Office of Responsibility for Budgeting (OBR) stated that the percentage of the population engaged in the labor market reached its peak at the beginning of 2020, but the “epidemic period witnessed a sudden and significant decline in this trend.”
He added that, in most cases, the unemployed cited the deterioration of their health as a reason.
At the beginning of 2023, 2.6 million Britons of working age (6.1 percent of the total) will be out of the workforce for health reasons, the office said in a report published last month.
In the latest figures it published on Tuesday, in which it announced that the unemployment rate had reached 4.2 percent in late June, the National Bureau of Statistics indicated that the number of unemployed people due to the deterioration of their health conditions “has risen to a new record.”
In this regard, Chris Thomas, a researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research, pointed to factors including the Covid epidemic, and the decade of economic austerity that preceded it after the 2008 banking crisis.
“They are factors that weigh heavily on the economy,” he said, adding that the United States is facing more difficulties than other comparable countries.
“It is not the only factor, but it is the basis for the greater part of the most important economic challenges that the UK faces,” he added.
The proportion of the workforce not available for employment for health reasons is exacerbating the labor shortage that many sectors have faced since Brexit and the post-Covid reopening of the economy.
The increasing number of unemployed also intensifies the pressure on British public funds, as spending on aid increases (about 6.8 billion pounds or 8.6 billion dollars), the demand for health care spending increases, and tax revenues in the state treasury decline, according to OBR.
Chronic Illness Inclusion CII, which helps people with this type of illness, says it has undergone a transformation since the pandemic.
Its co-president, Fran Springfield, said that in the past, people who come to it have suffered from a wide range of diseases, but today what is known as protracted Covid has become “one of the most important drivers.”
He explained that long-term COVID-19 has shed more light on the difficulties faced by people who suffer from chronic diseases and conditions that limit their energy level for a long time.
This includes long waiting times to receive treatment through the state-funded National Health Service, knowing that a record number of people amounting to 7.6 million people are currently on the lists of the authority in England alone, awaiting treatment.
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