There are now over 3 million households in the UK where no one of working age is in any form of work - the relentless rise of the ‘workless household’ is highlighted by new figures from the Office for National Statistics who have found that the number of working-age people in workless households jumped by 500,000 to 4.8 million in the year to June. 17% of households with people of working age have no one participating in the formal labour market. 2 million children belong to them and the risks of persistent and deep poverty are greatest for these groups. Little wonder that benefit dependency is rife for such families - the paradox is that those on the lowest incomes or whose main source of income are transfer payments, often face the highest effective marginal tax rates. Crucially the depth of non-employment is highest among lone-parent families - the workless household rate was highest for lone parent households, at 40.4 per cent,

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Here is a regional snapshot of the problem - with the North East, Inner London and Northern Ireland suffering from the highest rates of economic inactivity among families with one or more people of working age