The Sun, May 12, Sir Iain Duncan Smith
WORK and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride was right to say yesterday that boosting employment is the key to increasing the size of the economy, reducing government borrowing and paving the way to growth and tax cuts.
Yet whenever the question arises, politicians glibly refer to those who have decided not to go back to work after sitting at home during the pandemic — a figure which at one point stood at 650,000.
Yet that is not the real issue.
After all, there are now fewer people inactive due to early retirement than pre-pandemic.
No, the rise in economic inactivity we have seen since the pandemic — with some nine million people now outside the workforce — is up by almost 500,000 since 2020.
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