Policy & Insight Team, 28th February 2025
Each month, the Policy and Insight team review datasets which give us an idea of how our local economy is doing. This helps us identify key challenges and respond to them.
We put this information in an overview report which you can find here: South Tyneside Data Observatory – Research, Intelligence and Evaluation – Intelligence
This blog is the second in our ‘Monthly Economic Monitor’ series and provides more details about this data and its implications. This month, we’re focusing on economic inactivity due to long term sickness.
What is economic inactivity?
Every three months, new employment, economic inactivity, and unemployment data from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Population Survey1 is published. The data covers a period of 12 months and is collected by interviewing members of randomly selected households.
Economically inactive people are without work and are not actively seeking it. This figure is shown as a proportion of the working age population (16-64). It includes people who have retired (before 65), are long term sick, temporarily sick, are looking after their family or home, students or are economically inactive due to ‘other reasons’ such as not needing employment.
Economic inactivity in South Tyneside
The most recent data on economic inactivity was published in January 2025 and tells us about people’s work status between October 2023 and September 2024.
Throughout this period, it is estimated that 32.3% of South Tyneside’s population aged 16-64 were economically inactive – about 29,300 people. This percentage is provided with a confidence interval of +/- 4.0.2 This means that although South Tyneside has the highest rate out of all North East local authorities, its rate is significantly higher than the rates of Darlington, Gateshead, Redcar and Cleveland, and Sunderland only. South Tyneside’s rate is also significantly higher than the North East and England-wide rates.
Economic Inactivity Rate – North East Local Authorities (Oct 2023 – Sep 2024; % 16-64 population)
If we look at South Tyneside’s economic inactivity rate over the last 10 years, we can see that there was a rise over the first year of the pandemic before levels returned to around where they were in 2018-2019. The borough’s rate rose again in 2022 and since then, has been consistently above a quarter of the working age population.
Economic Inactivity Rate – South Tyneside (Oct 2023 – Sep 2024; % 16-64 population)
The England-wide economic inactivity rate also increased during the pandemic and kept increasing, reaching 21.4% of the working age population in the 12 months to March 2023. It has remained significantly below South Tyneside’s rate.
According to a Institute for Employment Studies (IES) report published in September 2024, nationally there an estimated 1 million people ‘missing’ from the labour force compared to pre-pandemic trends. Overall, the share of people in the labour force is now the lowest that it has been since 1998. The IES note that this is being driven by fewer young people in work, more older people out of work and more people off with long-term health conditions
The IES also estimate that virtually all (89%) of the increase in people out of work nationally is accounted for by those who last worked before the pandemic began or have never worked at all (though students account for most of this increase).
What is the most common reason for economic inactivity?
Office for National Statistics data shows that England wide, ‘looking after family or home’ was the leading cause of economic inactivity between 2004 and 2020, when it was overtaken by ‘long term sickness’ (excluding students from the analysis). Between 2020 and the most recent period, the proportion of economically inactive people reporting long term sickness grew from 22.7% to 27.3%. Meanwhile, the proportion inactive due to looking after their family or home fell from 21.3% to 19%.
In South Tyneside, the picture is a little more complicated. Since 2004 (again, excluding students) ‘long term sickness’ has tended to be a more common reason for inactivity than looking after family or the home. However, the two figures haven’t typically been significantly different from each other. We started to see this change in 2020 and including the most recent period, the proportion of economically inactive people ‘long term sick’ has now been significantly higher than the proportion looking after their family or home for 8 rolling 1-year periods.
In the 12 months to September 2024, the data shows that while 1 in 5 (21.8%) of South Tyneside’s economically inactive residents were looking after their family or home, nearly 2 in 5 (38.1%) were long-term sick (11,100 people).
What health conditions are common among people who are economically inactive due to long term sickness?
While we don’t have South Tyneside specific data on this, an Office for National Statistics article on UK trends can help us understand what is happening in the borough.
Between the start of the pandemic and early 2023, the number of people economically inactive due to long term sickness nationally rose by 400,000 to over 2.5 million people.
At that time, the most common health condition reported was depression, bad nerves, or anxiety. This was reported by 53% of people (1.35 million), representing a 40% rise since 2019. Most of this increase was from people reporting it as a secondary health condition, rather than their main one.
The next most prevalent health conditions among this cohort were musculoskeletal. ‘Problems with legs or feet’ were reported by 1.08 million people, while ‘problems with back of neck’ were reported by just under 1 million people (995,378), representing rises of 29% and 28%, respectively. Among those who reported a main condition that was musculoskeletal, 70% said that they had more than one type of musculoskeletal health condition.
The data shows that most people inactive due to long term sickness have multiple health conditions. Just over 2 in 3 reported 3 or more health conditions, and 2 in 5 reported 5 or more. This is an increase of 33.4% and 42%, respectively, since 2019. This tells us that the majority of people who are economically inactive due to long term sickness experience complex health issues with more than one barrier to work.
What does this mean for South Tyneside?
We don’t have comprehensive data on the percentage of people in South Tyneside who have multiple conditions. However, we do have some data on common conditions experienced by people who are long-term sick.
In 2023, a quarter (24.8%) of residents over 16 reported a long-term musculoskeletal condition, which is significantly higher than the England wide-average of 18.4% . Data from the same year shows that 1 in 5 (20.1%) residents over 16 reported at least two long term health conditions, at least one of which is musculoskeletal. This figure is also significantly higher than the England-wide average of 13.4%.
While ensuring people with health conditions can access support they need is important, we know that there is much more to health than healthcare.
According to the most recent Index of Multiple Deprivation (2019), just under half of South Tyneside’s neighbourhoods are in the 20% most deprived areas in England. Research tells us that people on the lowest incomes are four times more likely to have multiple conditions than those with the highest incomes. In addition, those living in the most deprived areas may acquire multiple conditions 10-15 years earlier than those in the most affluent areas.
This is important because it means that South Tyneside residents are at higher risk of very poor health during their working lives and in turn, economic inactivity. In fact, analysis undertaken by IPPRs Commission on Health and Prosperity estimates that people in the most deprived local authorities in England are nearly one and a half times more likely to experience economic inactivity.
Using Census 2021 data, research commissioned by the Local Government Association identified factors associated with long-term sickness related economic inactivity. Among other things, the research found that having Level 2 or above qualifications was associated with lower levels of inactivity due to sickness or disability. This could reflect the role of qualifications in enabling individuals to access roles that accommodate their health needs. At the same time, this could reflect barriers to achieving qualifications experienced by people with disabilities.
In conclusion
Long-term sickness related economic inactivity is a complex issue rooted in health and social inequalities. This means that addressing economic inactivity requires an approach that combines supporting people with long-term conditions to improve and manage their health, while addressing the root causes of poor health and health inequalities.
The Council is working closely with partners in South Tyneside, the North East Combined Authority and the Integrated Care Board to address this. There are a number of initiatives and programmes being brought forward which aim to better support individuals by centring services around them. These include:
- The delivery of an Inactivity Trailblazer and Health & Growth Accelerator programme which are due to start in April 2025
- Connected to Work which is a £49.5m 5-year regional programme. It will support 13,500 people with health conditions and those with complex barriers to get into employment and on in work. Residents who are suitable for the programme will be offered support through either:
- An Individual Placement Support (IPS) model, or
- Local Supported Employment (LSE) model for those have greater or multiple barriers to work
Since 2023 partners in South Tyneside have been delivering a range of initiatives to tackle economic inactivity at a community level. Many of these initiatives have been funded through the Government’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund. This funding was due to come to an end in March 2025. However, some local programmes have been given an extension to March 2026, including the health and employment programme run by Northern Rights.
Next time
We’ll discuss new data on our local business make up in South Tyneside.
- The Annual Population Survey is the largest ongoing household survey in the UK, based on interviews with the members of randomly selected households. The survey covers a diverse range of topics, including personal characteristics, labour market status, work characteristics, education and health. Currently, APS estimates are designated experimental statistics and should be interpreted with caution. You can read more about that here: Annual Population Survey – Nomis – Official Census and Labour Market Statistics.
- For this dataset (and many others), it isn’t practical to ask everyone in the UK about their work status. Instead, a sample of people are asked, allowing inferences to be made about the wider population. To account for normal differences between samples, figures are usually provided with ‘confidence intervals’.
Confidence intervals provide the range of values we expect the figure to fall within most of the time, in this instance, 95% of the time.
In this example, South Tyneside’s economic inactivity rate was 32.3% with a 95% confidence interval of 4. This means that if the survey was conducted 100 times with different samples, we would expect the male employment rate to be between 28.3% and 36.3% 95 of those times.
When comparing figures with confidence intervals, it’s important to consider whether the ranges overlap. If they do, we can’t say the difference is significant.