A “lost workforce” of more than six million people is costing the UK economy almost £455 billion a year in output, according to a new report that calls for a more inclusive labour market to tackle the rise in worklessness.
Research sponsored by Tesco, the supermarket that is Britain’s largest private sector employer, and carried out by the Social Market Foundation, a think tank, estimates that about 14 per cent of Britain’s working age population is not in a job but would like to join the workforce.
This cohort includes 1.86 million unemployed who are actively looking for work and also more than four million others who are deemed to be economically inactive but would want a job if their circumstances were different. This latter
