Officially, just over 4% of people are unemployed – about 1.4 million people in the UK. While there has been a slight uptick in recent months, unemployment is still relatively low historically. But the unemployed represent only a small part of the nearly 11 million working-age people (aged 16-64) who are not in a paid job. About nine million of them are not called “unemployed” because they are not actively looking for work, or available to start a job. Instead these people are called “economically inactive”. Click here for a breakdown from the BBC of reasons why people are not currently working.
