Half a million people have left the workforce in the past three years because they are suffering from long-term illness.
The number of people who are unable to work because of a long-term condition has risen from 2 million in spring 2019 to 2.5 million this summer, according to an analysis published by the Office for National Statistics.
Covid-19 has accelerated an existing trend. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 360,000 people have been forced to leave the workforce because they suffer from a health condition that affects their ability to work.
Long-term illness now accounts for 28 per cent of people who are “economically inactive”, meaning that they are neither working nor looking for work, up from 25 per cent
