The slow recovery of the UK economy is being badly hampered by the level of people who are not in work – either by choice or because of the inability to find employment.
In the UK as a whole, the proportion of people aged from 16 to 64 who are not in employment or actively seeking work is 21.2%.
However, the spatial intelligence model EvaluateLocate, reports that this nationwide average masks substantial location-specific variations.
Across 10 major cities analysed by EvaluateLocate this month, inactivity rates varied from 16.2% in Bristol to 29% in Newcastle. After Bristol, Edinburgh had the next best (lowest) inactivity rate at 17% (see Table 1 in Appendix).
The inactivity trend has been a persistent problem for the UK in recent years as the country has tried to generate economic growth through higher levels of employment and productivity.
EvaluateLocate CEO, Adam Kirby, said, “Economic inactivity is caused by a variety of reasons – and is not always a consequence of choice.
“However, this analysis underlines how much the phenomenon varies across different parts of the UK – and how much the proportion of people in work impacts the overall health and vitality of local economies.
“From a more positive perspective, during the past 12 months we have seen our UK economic vitality index rise by 5.1% with all the cities in this analysis seeing index increases of between 2.6% in Cardiff through to 8.8% in Belfast.
“To accelerate this economic momentum, the UK must tackle the stubborn problem of economic inactivity by introducing measures which stimulate growth at a localised level.”
The EvaluateLocate Economic Vitality Index rates every location in the UK from postcode district level upwards and is driven by analysis of 100+ economic and demographic metrics.
