{"id":141373,"date":"2025-05-29T12:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T12:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/141373\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T12:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T12:22:09","slug":"more-than-a-quarter-northern-ireland-people-not-in-work-with-disability-up-to-11-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/141373\/","title":{"rendered":"More than a quarter Northern Ireland people not in work with disability up to 11% \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stormont has been urged to prioritise supporting people into work after a rise in economic inactivity.<\/p>\n

The latest figures show growth in the proportion classified as economically inactive, most of whom are those of working age with sickness and disability, carers for family members, full-time student<\/a>s, and early retirees.<\/p>\n

Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald<\/a> said the 1.8 percentage point increase over the past 12 months to 27.2% was not statistically significant and \u201cwithin the expected sampling variability\u201d.<\/p>\n

The regional rate is 5.8 percentage points higher than the overall UK rate of 21.4%.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>\"Mayor<\/a><\/p>\n

A member of the assembly\u2019s economy committee said the increase was due to Stormont \u201cabandoning some of the most vulnerable people in our society\u201d, while the head of a think-tank urged the devolved administration to do more to encourage people into work.<\/p>\n

In a recent written response to an assembly question, the Sinn F\u00e9in minister described economic activity as a \u201cpersistent and long-standing issue for the economy in the north\u201d but said policy was led by Communities Minister Gordon Lyons.<\/p>\n

Ms Archibald said her department aimed to \u201cimprove access to the labour market\u201d with its so-called Good Jobs bill<\/a>, which the minister aims to have on the statute book by the end of the mandate in two years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

She said she was committed to working with Mr Lyons and Health Minister Mike Nesbitt to \u201chelp address barriers to employment\u201d. <\/p>\n

The Department for Communities<\/a> (DfC) said it provided a range of measures to tackle economic inactivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cReasons attributed to economic inactivity are varied and complex, and can include ill health, caring responsibilities, and being in education,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDfC continues to play its part in tackling economic inactivity across these cross-cutting areas with a wide range of partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foyle MLA Sin\u00e9ad McLaughlin said many of those who were economically inactive were \u201cbeing left behind due to systemic neglect\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rise in economic inactivity is deeply worrying and highlights an Executive that is abandoning some of the most vulnerable people in our society,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese aren\u2019t new issues \u2013 they\u2019ve been known for years \u2013 and yet this executive has done little to address them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ann Watt, director of think tank Pivotal, described the economic inactivity rate as \u201cpersistently high\u201d and said the proportion of those not working because of sickness or disability was increasing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorryingly, after being on a downward trend, the rate of inactivity due to sickness or disability has been rising for the last ten years, and is now around 11% of the working age population,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile record low levels of unemployment often make the headlines, only by acknowledging the stubbornly high rates of economic inactivity do we get a full picture of the tight labour market for employers, and the untapped potential of so many people who are not currently seeking paid employment and the personal and economic benefits a good job can bring.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pivotal director urged the devolved administration to do more, beginning with a fresh strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSupporting people into employment should be a top priority for the Northern Ireland Executive, not least with the cuts to disability benefits that are coming from the UK government \u2013 Northern Ireland has a much lower rate of employment of people with disabilities than other parts of the UK,\u201d Ms Watt said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile there are lots of different employment programmes available, at present Northern Ireland has no targets in place for how economic inactivity will be reduced and no new strategy published for 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stormont has been urged to prioritise supporting people into work after a rise in economic inactivity. The latest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[21528,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-141373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-labour-market","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114591101358331903","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}