Shocking figures,just apart from money what damage does this do to a nation ?

[sten_super]

A couple of clarifications, and a bit of context;

The data on workless households includes only households where at least one person is of working age (16-64) so does not include all retired households, as some have mentioned.
The local area data refers to 2012 - the most recent national data for the UK shows a decline in workless households from 18.1% in 2012 to 17.1% in 2013.
West Sussex had the 4th lowest reported rate of workless households in 2012, at 11.3%.
In the UK, 28% of workless households said that they were so because of sickness or disability (33% in Scotland), 20% because they were unemployed, 18% because they retired early, 16% because they were looking after the home/family and 13% were studying.
In 2013, there were 297,000 households where all members had never worked, down from 340,000 in 2012 - 297,000 equates to 1.5% of households in the UK.
36% of the UK's workless households are single parent households, and a further 33% are single people households. Couples with children make up only 5% of the total.
43% of workless households are aged 50 to 64 (that's 18% of all households in this age band) and the majority of these are workless due to early retirement or sickness/disability.

Regional worklessness, 2012
Workless households, 2013

 

[knocky1]

We don't. The latest quarterly figures show a 0.6% growth while Germany's showed a 0.7% rise but that was dwarfed by Portugal's 1.1% increase.

The indications are the UK's figures will pick up in the current quarter but no-one could say for definite yet.

Yes, I should get more ...

I just found the same figures much later than you and found your post afterwards BUT we actually drew with the Germans at .7% for the second quarter of 2013.

I would think over a number of months Germany would be growing quickest in Europe especially as Portugal has declined so much. I am not going to look into that though far too sunny.

Yes I must get out more......

 

[BigGully]

Uneducated and unqualified potential workforce that needs to find unskilled work to match their current £25-£50K per annum benefit income.

Blame who you want, its depressingly unsurprising.