By MICHAEL LEA

Unemployment crisis: Six million Britons live in homes where nobody has a job

Six million Britons are living in homes where no one has a job, shocking official figures revealed today.



They include almost 1.8million children, one in seven of all under 16s, growing up in households entirely dependent on state handouts.

Experts say these youngsters are more at risk from drifting into a life of joblessness, poverty, ill-health and crime.

This army of families on welfare - costing taxpayers nearly £13billion a year in benefits - has been untouched by a decade of Labour's efforts to get them into work, critics claim.

In total, the number of homes where no one works has risen by 43,000 in the past five years to a shade over three million - nearly one in six of all UK working-age households.

They cover almost 4.3million adults, excluding pensioners, and the 1.77million children, of whom 1.2million live in lone parent households.

According to analysis by the Office for National Statistics of the Labour Force Survey of employment for the three months to June this year, more than one in 10 - 11.4 per cent - of the entire workforce is living in workless households.

Yet until recently, Britain has enjoyed an expanding economy which has helped produce record levels of employment.

However evidence has been piling up that millions of Britons have been content to spend entire lives on benefits while four out of every five new jobs have been taken by immigrants.

'This is a shocking indictment of the Government's failure to tackle child poverty,' Tory welfare reform spokesman James Clappison said.

'Britain now has the highest number of children in poverty in Europe. If nearly 1.8million children are growing up in households with no one in work, they are potentially being condemned to a cycle of low achievement and unemployment.'

There are 2.8million children living in poverty when measured before housing costs are taken in account - the Government's preferred method. After housing costs, there are 3.8million. Last year, the figure rose by 100,000 before housing costs and 200,000 after.

With the country now in the grip of an economic downturn and growing fears of a recession there are now worries the number of 'workless households' will surge.

The study, Work and Worklessness Among Households, also found that 40 per cent of all single-parent families have no one in employment, while the rate of worklessness among couple households was just five per cent.

Meanwhile, the employment rate for lone parents is 56.3 per cent, compared with 71.7 per cent for married or cohabiting mothers.

The findings are likely to be seized on by the Tories as proof that marriage needs to be recognised with tax incentives.

David Cameron is considering reintroducing the Married Couples Tax Allowance, which was scrapped by Gordon Brown, while he was Chancellor, in 2000.

Mr Brown has hailed Labour's New Deal schemes and other welfare-to-work programmes as a success, claiming they have helped 1.8million people find jobs.

However, a damning report by an influential Commons committee earlier this year, found that the Government still cannot say how many benefit claimants are jobless because they cannot work, and how many because they will not work.

The New Deal for Lone Parents cost taxpayers £40 for everyone it found a job for in 2006, the MPs said.



The New Deal 25 Plus cost £360 per job and the New Deal for Young People cost £390 a job.

The most spectacular failure was the New Deal for Partners, aimed at finding jobs for the domestic partners of long-term benefits claimants.

In 2006, it found jobs for only 61 people at a cost to the taxpayer of £1,100 each.

A 'working-age household' is one that includes at least one person aged between 16 and 59, for women, or 64 for men.



Workless households are where at least one working-age person lives but no one over 16 is employed.

LibDem work and pensions spokesman Jenny Willott said: 'These figures paint a sobering picture of the mounting unemployment problem that will put extreme pressure on our welfare system.

'The number of working households has slumped for the first time under this Government and the number where at least one adult is out of work is at a ten year high.



'We need a simple, fair and effective welfare system that provides tailored support to help people get back into work.'