The number of people not working in the UK due to chronic illnesses has soared since the pandemic, putting pressure on the British economy, analysts said on Tuesday.
The proportion of the population in the labour market peaked in early 2020 but "the pandemic saw a sudden and dramatic reversal of this trend," according to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a public budget forecasting body.
This was driven mostly by people citing poor health as a main reason for their inactivity, it said.
At the start of 2023, 2.6 million Britons of working age (6.1 per cent of the total) were out of the labour force for health reasons, the body said in a report published last month.
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