Sick or sick? The extent of the employment crisis in charts

To look for the root of Britain’s unemployment crisis is to realize that the problem is that there are so many places you can start.

There is no doubt that Covid delivered a shock that pushed many people out of work and into illness. But while all countries saw a rise in unemployment rates before the pandemic – some much larger than Britain’s – Britain is the only major economy where the employment rate did not rise again. While most countries saw a return to the pre-pandemic trend, Britain still had around 800,000 more people out of work.

Asking why this is so goes further back. For at least a decade, the unemployment benefit system has created increasingly strong incentives to take sick leave, as has been repeated