Trends in unemployment and long-term unemployment
About 2 mins
Key points
- Unemployment rose slightly in 2024 to 4.4% from 4.1% in 2023.
- 1.47 million adults were unemployed in 2024 – around 180,000 more than pre-pandemic in 2019.
- Long-term unemployment has remained fairly consistent over recent years at around 1%, having decreased from 2.8% in 2013.
Unemployment can affect people’s health in several ways: it can act as a source of stress, deprive people of income and social networks, and lead to unhealthy coping behaviours. A longer duration of unemployment can worsen the extent of these issues and, consequently, someone’s health.
This chart shows the percentage of UK adults aged 16–64 who are unemployed (out of work and actively seeking work) and how long they have been unemployed for, between 1993 and 2024.
- The UK unemployment rate fell to 4.0% in 2019, from a previous peak of 8.3% in 2011 following the 2008 financial crisis.
- Unemployment rose over the course of 2020 due to pandemic restrictions, with 4.6% of economically active people unemployed in 2020 and 4.7% in 2021.
- In 2022, the unemployment rate returned to its previous downward trajectory reaching a record low of 3.9%, but has since been increasing, reaching 4.4% in 2024.
- Long-term unemployment changed very little following the pandemic, and has remained at its lowest level of around 1% since falling in the mid 2010s.
A decrease in unemployment is not necessarily accompanied by a rise in employment as it is possible that fluctuations in the unemployment rate reflect flows of people in and out of economic inactivity. Indeed, since 2020, the employment rate has started to decrease while the inactivity rate has started to increase. The inactivity rate is now still higher than it was prior to the pandemic.
- Unemployed people are people who are not working, who have been actively seeking work in the last four weeks and are available to start work within the next two weeks, as specified by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). This analysis does not use the claimant count, which gives an administrative count of people receiving unemployment benefit.
- The unemployment rate is the unemployed population as a share of the economically active population.
- Long-term unemployed people are people who have been unemployed for 12 months or longer.
- People who are economically inactive are people who are not in employment and who have not been seeking work within the last four weeks and/or are unable to start work within the next two weeks.
- The unemployment rate is the number of unemployed people as a proportion of the economically active population aged 16–64 years.
Source: Office for National Statistics, Labour Force Survey, UNEM01 SA: Unemployment by age and duration (seasonally adjusted), UK, 1993 to 2024
