Proportion of London's working-age population who are not in paid work by ethnic group (2013 Q4, 2020 Q1 and 2023 Q4)
Last updated: June 2024
Next estimated update: September 2024
What does this indicator show?
This indicator shows the proportion of people who are not in paid work in London, split by ethnicity.
Worklessness here is different from unemployment. Unemployment only includes people who are ‘economically active’ - those who are in work, looking for work, or able to start work soon. The figure here also includes ‘economically inactive’ people, which includes people who are unable to work as they are studying, retired, sick, or a family carer. This means that the figures in this indicator are much higher than unemployment rates. See reasons for not working.
What does it tell us?
39.5% of working-age Londoners with Pakistani/Bangladeshi backgrounds are not working - more than any other group shown here. Black Londoners have the second highest proportion (36.9%).
White people have the lowest rate of being out of work (20.7%) followed by people of Indian background at 21.5%.
How this has changed over time
Every major ethnic group in London has seen a fall in the proportion of people not in paid work in the decade up to June 2023. In 2013, almost half of Londoners of Pakistani/Bangladeshi background were not in paid work (48.5%), down to 39.5% today.
People of Black ethnic background have had the smallest fall in the proportion of people not in work in the last decade, by just 2.7 percentage points.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the rate of being out of work rose for people of Pakistani/Bangladeshi, Black, Mixed and White background. It has gone up most sharply for Black Londoners, by 4.3 percentage points.
Want to know more?
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