Benefits Pay £2,500 More Than Full Time Job, Analysis Shows
A life on sickness benefits will soon pay £2,500 more a year than a minimum wage job, according to analysis from the Centre for Social Justice. The Mail has more.
Jobless people on sickness payments are due to overtake those on the national living wage who will earn less after tax, the Centre for Social Justice found.
It comes after Sir Keir Starmer failed to get through reforms to the benefits system that would have saved £5 billion.
The report found that a Universal Credit claimant who isn’t working and claims the average housing benefit and Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for ill health will receive £25,000 next year.
However, a full-time worker on the national living wage will earn around £22,500 after paying income tax and National Insurance.
Former work and pensions secretary Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “Before lockdown, we had the lowest numbers of workless households since records began.
“However figures from the Centre for Social Justice show how damaging Covid was and that, since then, the scale of the disincentive to work has grown dramatically.
“That’s why the Bill’s failure to look at real reform of the system is more costly than just the billions lost to the Chancellor, the real loss is that of the wasted lives trapped in a system of dependence rather than one of independence and achievement.”
The CSJ also cited other examples of generous benefits payments which outstrip salaries for lower-paid jobs.
It found that a jobless single parent claiming for anxiety and for a child with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) will get nearly £37,000 a year.
This would be £14,000 more than a worker on the national minimum wage receives.
Last week the Office for Budget Responsibility said sickness was set to hit £100 billion by 2030 and warned that UK finances are in a “vulnerable position”.
PIP payments to assist those with disabilities and health conditions have more than doubled since the pandemic, from 13,000 to 34,000 a month.
The increase has been driven by a rise in the number of people claiming for anxiety and depression as their main condition.
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And this of course raises the question: what’s the incentive for work?
I’m lucky: my job is relatively well paid, interesting (engineering, before you ask…) and I would get bored if I couldn’t work.
But I imagine working in some shitty telesales job, being bullied by a psychopathic boss, barely earning enough to live on… and all of a sudden being paid and not having to work does look like an attractive option.
I don’t entirely agree. I think people get a great deal of satisfaction from working. They need to earn enough and they need to be treated with respect but doing nothing is not attractive long term.
I think, at least to a point, the satisfaction you might get from working probably depends on the work you are doing, though I agree doing nothing isn’t really much of an option.
I agree with you – there is a satisfaction in working. So why not claim your £25,000 a year in benefits and then do some work on the side? Once your car is paid for on the mobility scheme, the cash in hand work should easily pay for 3 or 4 holidays a year, latest phones and TVs and fast food deliveries.
Unfortunately, I work for a living and am paid PAYE. I have an appointment at the tattooist on Friday to get “Mug” etched onto my forehead.
Well I have just over 4 years until I get my state pension (as things stand), so I’m looking forward to similar if not better payouts from the state, for all I’ve contributed over the last 45 years or so – oh wait!
I’m already retired so technically “doing nothing”. But now I find I’m busy with things other than having to earn a living, and if I want to ‘earn’ a bit more I can sell on eBay, or trade stocks and shares.
Thanks to Will Jones & the DS for this shocker. I had read a while back that some unemployed people were claiming a whopping £40,000 a year in benefits, taking full advantage of the bewildering array of payments, scamming the system. No wonder the country is struggling!
Added to which, at 16.1million, nearly one in four of us is apparently ‘registered disabled’.
quite incredible, a society of hypochondriacs, drug addicts, food addicts, without any sense of personal responsibility, but highly cognisant of ‘rights’ and demands for ‘free’ (ie stolen from me)
With over 50% of the population on benefits the Turkeys are not going to vote for Christmas, Labour has its client state now. However; a shock is on its way, the IMF will step in, there will be public sector wage cuts and benefits will be rmoved. Unfortunatley those of us who do work and run businesses and are already suffering to pay these parasites, we will be hit again.
“Former work and pensions secretary Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “Before lockdown, we had the lowest numbers of workless households since records began.
“However figures from the Centre for Social Justice show how damaging Covid was and that, since then, the scale of the disincentive to work has grown dramatically.”
Nonsense. It shows how damaging the insane lockdown policies etc were.
Covid in itself was nothing, but Clown World Cost 350 billion plus – and counting.
I find it very odd that no mention of this debt is made and yet the 20 billion Black Hole.gets the blame. I was never particularly good at maths but surely 350 is somewhat greater than 20.
Iain Duncan Smith is responsible for Universal Credit (UC) which has been an absolute disaster since inception. Prior to UC the three principal benefits were Job Seekers Allowance (JSA), Incapacity Benefit (IB) and Income Support (IS).
JSA was paid to people out of work but looking for work – generally.
IB was paid to those who didn’t want to work and some of these were genuinely incapable although there were plenty of scammers and Income Support was typically paid to lone parents ie not sick, not looking for work but unable to work because of other factors; babies fitted this criteria admirably. Lone parents with three or four children who shared the same father were strangely not uncommon.
UC sought to unify ALL benefits, including the add-ons like Housing Benefit (HB) which was paid separately via the local Councils, and frankly it has been a disaster. The default position for people who pay benefits is when in doubt – pay it, so errors can run for years.
IDS is very much the problem maker where the Benefits industry is concerned and he needs to STFU.
This is a disingenuous article for two main reasons:
The tacit assumption that the people receiving these payments are really fit for work and that there’s really someone who’d hire them despite there’s no proof for either of both should really be named as 3rd reason here.
This anti-disability benefit campaign made out of nothing but hot air and engineered by people who themselves were never forced to work for a living and will never come into this situation is seriously shameful.
I’m not sure housing benefit is paid direct to the landlord these days. It USED to be, that would be sensible, but now i think you’ll find the claimant gets the cash and choses to pay their landlord.
Which then leads to the system where the eviction process has been tightened up to the point where the landlord always loses, so ‘may’ (I don’t know if it’s rife) gets screwed both ways.
It’s not part of the disposable income of the claimant, no matter how it’s paid.
Absolutely, utterly clueless.
And your counterargument is?
The cost of a roof over your head is a cost that everyone incurs but not everyone has to pay it. Some have housing costs paid for them. A hidden part of income nevertheless.
Arbitrary increases in minimum wage are likely to reduce jobs in the onslaught on working people by the government. Recruitment has slumped, bankruptcies are on the rise, unemployment is rising and all likely to get worse when Blubbing Rachel from Accounts announces the next round of taxes rises to continue the cycle of decline.
IDS was on GB News this morning and made one very salient comment – face to face interviews where you can look into their eyes, watch the sweat beads appear as they lie stopped with Covid and now all the interviewers are at home on the sofa ‘working’ from home. Nothing beats face to face and that is why the Lying Oafs ‘world beating’ Track & Trace disaster was doomed from the start – no face to face interviews.