Analysis suggests unemployment due to long-term illness has increased six-fold in some parts of Britain since before Covid.
According to government estimates, 2.8 million people are currently on sick leave, up from around 700,000 before the pandemic hit the country.
Rising rates of mental health problems have fuelled the “economic slack crisis” that Labour has vowed to tackle as part of plans to boost the economy and save taxpayers billions in welfare payments.
According to the Resolution Foundation, young people are now just as likely to lose their jobs due to long-term illness as people in their 40s.
Analysis of official statistics by MailOnline shows that more than 14 per cent of Dover’s working-age population is now estimated to be “economically inactive” due to long-term illness – or 9,700 people.
For comparison, the figure in 2019-20 was almost 2.5 percent.
Cambridge recorded the second-largest increase, after Dover. It rose from almost 1.5 per cent of 16-64 year-olds who were out of work due to long-term illness in 2019/20 to 6 per cent in 2023/24.
According to data from the ONS Labour Force Survey, around one in 15 local authorities has seen rates at least double over the same period.
Figures are estimates based on self-reported cases of chronic diseases.
Blackpool, meanwhile, has the highest rate in Britain, with 16 per cent (12,900 out of 80,800 people) of its residents unemployed due to illness.
Millions more people are out of work across the country for other reasons, such as attending college, being retired or caring for family.
According to the ONS, total economic inactivity in Britain now exceeds 9.5 million. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was around 8.4 million.
Being a student used to be the main cause of economic inactivity, but long-term illness overtook it at the end of 2021.
Nearly 30 percent of economically inactive people are so due to a long-term illness, compared to 25 percent before the pandemic.
In England, Scotland and Wales, the number of people unemployed due to long-term illness rose by almost 20 percent between 2019 and 2024.
Among people who are economically inactive due to long-term illness, depression, malaise or anxiety has consistently been the most common primary or secondary cause.
ONS figures show the numbers rose by almost 390,000 or 40 per cent, from around 965,000 in 2019 to around 1.35 million in 2023. This is the largest total increase of all reported conditions.
Louise Murphy, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation think tank, said: “This lays bare the scale of the economic slack crisis facing Britain, with rising ill health blighting jobs and career prospects for too many people.
‘But the health problems we face today are different from those of the past.
‘Mental health problems are driving much of the recent rise in inactivity and are concentrated among young people, who are now just as likely to be out of work due to a long-term illness as people in their 40s.’
Labour’s health adviser suggested this week that workers on long-term sick leave should face penalties on their benefits if they do not look for work.
Alan Milburn, who was health secretary under Tony Blair, said getting millions of people who are medically inactive back into work would cut welfare costs.
Mr Milburn said “screening, conditionality and sanctions” would be needed to get those who refuse to work into employment.
But he also criticised the UK’s “perverse” welfare system, which “compensates for being classed as unable to work rather than actively seeking it”.
Mr Milburn said: ‘Those who are classed as officially seeking work are offered some support to do so, but they also face harsh conditionalities and lower benefit payments than those who are classed as unable to work.
‘In contrast, this latter economically inactive group receives little support in finding work, but does not face any conditionality and receives higher payments than those actively seeking work.
‘Tackling this problem will require action across all public services, from schools, universities and the NHS to job centres.’
A survey included in the report also found that the most common barrier to work for those who want to do so is a disability or health problem, with 62 percent saying this was a problem for them.
Half said family or caring commitments were a barrier and more than two in five said there was too much competition and they lacked recent experience.
Labour’s Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall this week promised to get two million more people into work.
In his first speech in office, he criticised the “dire” situation which means Britain is “the only G7 country whose employment rate has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels”.
But he said the government would abandon the Conservatives’ hardline approach and pledged to end “divisive rhetoric about those fighting versus those seeking sustenance”.
Ms Kendall said the Department for Work and Pensions needed “fundamental reform” to “move from being a welfare department to being a work department”.