No one working in 15,000 Oldham households

ONE in five homes in Oldham have no adults in paid employment.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show 15,000 households across the borough have no one working, the equivalent of 21.9 per cent.

A workless household is a household that includes at least one person aged 16 to 64 where no one aged 16 or over is in employment.

Of the 67,000 households across Oldham with someone of working age, a further 20,000 households (29.5 per cent) have at least one person working, and 32,000 (48.6 per cent) where everyone works.

Oldham has the highest percentage of workless households across Greater Manchester North which includes Rochdale (19.9 per cent), Bolton (18.2 per cent), Bury (14.8 per cent) and Wigan (19.3 per cent).

Across the North-West the figure is 21 per cent and 19.2 per cent nationally.

The North-East has the highest percentage of workless households with 24.3 per cent, closely followed by Inner London and Wales at 22.9 per cent.

The South-East has the lowest number of homes where no one works at 14.2 per cent.

The Government said the fact that no one worked in almost one out of five households was a “shocking reflection” of the scale of the problem it had inherited.

Minister for Employment Chris Grayling said: “These figures are a further indictment of how the current system is failing families and is a shocking reflection of the scale of worklessness across the UK that this Government has inherited.

“Some areas of Britain are suffering from intergenerational worklessness, which is why we must act now to ensure that children living in workless households are not left behind like their parents have been.

“This is why we are pushing ahead with our Work Programme, which will give people who are out of work and need a job the right support at the right time so that they can get into employment.”

The Work Programme will offer personalised support to people on a range of benefits, including Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, Incapacity Benefits and Employment and Support Allowance.