Politics has been dominated by discussions of the future of welfare and the quality of life for those who receive benefits. However, there has often been a lack of understanding of those on welfare who are often referred to simply as the unemployed – or in the worst case “benefit scroungers”.
Out-of-work people living in social housing are too often referred to as one big group with the same enduring stigma. Around half (52%) of working-age people who live in social housing are not working, compared to just 29% in private tenures. The sector undeniably houses a significant proportion of unemployed and economically inactive people.
Unsurprisingly it also provides the important function of sheltering society’s most vulnerable people, for example disabled people and single parents. In many circumstances, worklessness is largely the result of these disadvantages.
A key point to understand is that only 10% of this population can actually be classified as unemployed. A much larger group of 40% is economically inactive. The distinction between unemployed and economically inactive is whether someone has been looking for work recently and would be able to start work immediately.
So what’s the story behind these 40% economically inactive social renters who haven’t been looking for work? More than half are long-term sick or disabled and a further 34% are carers. With a further 4% being temporarily sick, a total of 88% are economically inactive due to barriers such as illness, disability or caring responsibilities.
How can social housing providers help people into work?
We have looked at providing a new approach understanding the combinations of disadvantage by dividing workless social renters into groups according to their characteristics, disadvantages and distance from the job market.
We found the cluster of people closest to the job market accounts for about 28% of currently workless social housing tenants (or nearly 1.1m people) including women with dependent children, unemployed men with some qualifications and men with health problems who are already looking for work.
These groups are most likely to be helped by existing employment support programmes without requiring any specific additional intervention. Housing associations should use their existing relationships with tenants to offer more personalised support to them in the job search and application process.
On the other hand, the groups furthest from the labour market include older people and people with multiple or long-term health problems, poor mental health and disabilities. This group comprises almost 800,000 people
The groups further away from the labour market will need more targeted and personalised support in order to help them prepare, look, get into and stay in work. People with disabilities could benefit from supported employment through intermediate labour markets, whereas those out of work for a longer time would benefit from more training or the introduction of return-to-work bonuses to help with additional employment costs due to caring responsibilities or ill health.
People who are not working are not a homogenous group that can simply be labelled unemployed and consequently they can’t be helped into the labour market with a one-size fits all approach.
Veronika Gstir is research manager at the National Housing Federation. To find out more about the research, read the full report here.
