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You can see other videos from our team by tapping here. The Office for National Statistics found a link between the virus and the soaring levels of workforce inactivity, which is causing economic problems for the UK, which could be explained by refreshing your browser, or Long COVID.
There isn't conclusive evidence to support the link between COVID and inactivity, which measures people who don't have a job nor are looking for one, but there has been little conclusive evidence so far. Since the Pandemic, the figures show why so many people have dropped out of the workforce, one of the things that is pushing up wages and inflation. Daniel Ayoubkhani, ONS statistician for social care and health, said today that working-age people are less likely to participate in the labour market because they have developed long COVID symptoms than before being infected with coronaviruses. It is strongest among people aged 50 years or over between long COVID and inactivity for reasons other than education or retirement. The ONS was cautious about drawing a firm connection, but said long COVID may have contributed to the decreasing participation in the U.K. labour market during the coronaviruses epidemic. Inactivity has risen by 600,000 since early 2020, with long-term sickness being the main factor. There is a problem with falling participation in the U.K., the only major economy where fewer people are in work than before the Pandemic. That participation gap has caused staff shortages, which in turn have lowered the growth capacity of the U.K. and added to inflationary pressures. The ONS found that inactivity increased by 217,000 among people with self-reported long COVID symptoms in the year to July 2022. Their inactivity rate went up 3.8 percentage points, compared with 0.4 percentage points for those with self-reported long COVID symptoms.
Those who still report COVID symptoms eight months to a year ago were between 34 per cent and 45 per cent more likely to be inactive than before the virus. The analysis also found that older workers who caught the virus were equally likely to retire, regardless of whether it turned into long COVID or not. Among people aged 50 to 64 years who were in employment 12 to 20 weeks after a first test-confirmed infection, transition to retirement occurred at similar rates for participants with and without self-reported long COVID, the ONS said. People with long COVID may have been more likely to leave employment because of ill-health, or less likely to enter it. The research was based on a sample of 206,000 participants aged 16 to 64 years and not in full-time education.