Rishi Sunak this week declared war on sick note culture. Along with asylum seekers it now seems sick people (damn them) are to blame the UK's faltering economy.
This is of course standard Tory scapegoating to distract away from the real underlying causes of the increasing numbers of people who are off work sick.
The increase in people off sick is something of a long term trend!
Stats....
There has been an increase in approximately 800K people aged 16-64 not working since 2018, and trend had been increasing most rapidly among younger workers.
On top of this the Resolution Foundation has reported that 20% of the UK workforce have a health condition which limits the amount of work they can do.
Causes
This BC article provides a starting point analysis...
The spread of causes is different depending on the age categories of workers....
- For younger people 35% report poor mental health as the reason for not being able to work, followed by cardiovascular/ digestive and then musculoskeletal.
- For those aged 35-49 30% the main reasons are poor mental health (30%), musculoskeletal (20%) and then cardiovascular/ digestive.
- For those aged 50-64 the figures are 15% mental health and nearer 35% musculoskeletal.
And the rest..
I wouldn't expect the BBC to be uber-critical of the system, but I can't help but feel there's something deeper underlying all of this, which is....
The fact that there's just too many pointless and crap and mundane low status jobs out there, which don't pay you enough have a decent quality of life!
I mean, back in the 60s at least crap jobs paid you enough to buy a house, nowadays, they don't.
Frankly I'd be throwing a few sickies if I were in that situation!