Shocking new stats have revealed that fewer than one in three people on Universal Credit are actually looking for a job. Just 31% of Brits on the unemployment benefit are classified as “searching for work”, with most not required to find a job, according to the latest data from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Around 9% of claimaints are already working and earning over £11,424 a year. In February 2020, the proportion was 52%, before the Covid pandemic increased the number of people claiming long-term sickness benefits who may never return to work. Since 2018, the total number of out-of-work benefits has increased by 80%.
Over the last five years, the number of people who are not required to find a job has increased faster than the number of people searching for work.
A whopping 60% of people on Universal Credit do not have to seek employment, many of whom have been signed off with sickness, according to Telegraph analysis of the DWP‘s data.
Between February 2024 and February 2025, the proportion of these claimaints shot up by a third.
This comes after the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) found that the equivalent of 2,000-plus under-30s are signing onto Universal Credit every day, a new analysis warns.
The number of people in this age group who are out of work and on UC has hit 1.08 million – 66,000 more than when Labour took office.
This “youth welfare surge” reflects a “deeper crisis in the wasted potential of young people”, the think tank claimed.
It pointed to worsening mental health among young people and increasing dependency on sickness benefits.
The CSJ is pushing for the withdrawal of Universal Credit health support and personal independence payments from people with “milder anxiety, depression or ADHD”. These and other measures would save £7.4billion by 2029-30, it states.
Joe Shalam of the centre said: “The Prime Minister is right that having a million jobless young people is a moral and economic disaster. But unless ministers grasp the nettle of welfare reform, Britain risks writing off a generation.”
