Office of National Statistics released some numbers covering the first quarter of this financial year along with estimates for second quarter. Below are the numbers for the first quarter.
Please note that as politicians keep boasting, the unemployment figures did fall. So did the employment numbers, and take a look at those employed figures, that's a big drop in the 16 - 64 bracket mostly hidden by the 65+ increase.
Finally the economically inactive bracket, this is people who aren't considered to be in work or looking for work, it's basically everyone outside the system, the ones the government doesn't care much about. All the people denied benefits, sanctioned, removed from PiP, those who have given up on the endless jumping through hoops and incomprehensible box ticking, all of them slip out of the system and become economically inactive.
The chart is in thousands so quarter one of this financial year added 104,000 people to the economically inactive list and since the number unemployed AND the number employed both fell on this quarter we can see where a lot of these people came from. Notice that the vast majority of people who became economically inactive were in the 16 - 64 group, NOT RETIREE'S.
Number (thousands) Change on May to Jul 2016 (thousands)
Employed 31,762 -6
Aged 16 to 64 30,548 -29
Aged 65 and over 1,213 23
Unemployed 1,616 -16
Aged 16 to 64 1,599 -14
Aged 65 and over 17 -2
Inactive 19,149 104
Aged 16 to 64 8,907 76
Aged 65 and over 10,242 28
Source: Office for National Statistics
But hey, unemployment is down a bit so the Tories are clearly doing a great job with that Austerity thing. Note there may be some sarcasm in this sentence.