ONS pegs value of cooking, cleaning and childcare at £1.24tn – almost £19,000 per person

Unpaid household work, such as looking after children, doing laundry and cooking, is worth £1.24tn per year – more than the value of the UK’s retail and manufacturing output combined, according to official figures.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) released data for 2015 and 2016 on Tuesday estimating the value of the unpaid work undertaken by households, which also included caring for adults at home and driving to work. It said the value had grown every year from 2005 to 2016.

ONS noted that in 2016 the figure, which equated to £18,932 per person, was greater than the £1.04tn total contribution of the UK’s non-financial corporation sector.

The body collects the data to supplement the more commonly used gross domestic product (GDP) figure, which does not include such unpaid household work.

“GDP is without question one of our most important economic indicators. It tells us about the size and shape of the economy. It helps the government and the Bank of England manage the economy, for example informing us about the likely development of the public finances,” said the ONS assistant director, Richard Tonkin.

“GDP is, however, incomplete. It is often, and incorrectly, used as an all-encompassing proxy for people’s living standards, something it was never designed for and which it doesn’t fully capture.”

He said that led the ONS to publish a “wider range of measures”, such as the household work figures, which statisticians said measure an “important aspect of people’s lives”.

Tonkin added: “Activities such as organising a holiday or finding the cheapest car insurance, which may have previously been carried out by the market through travel agents and insurance brokers, are now being produced by households themselves, using online services that are often free at the point of use.

“This movement away from paying for these services could lead to a reduction in GDP, while in practice people’s wellbeing may be higher because of these activities.”

The data showed that, in 2005, the total value of unpaid household work was £684.87bn. It has since increased by more than 80%.

The ONS previously released similar data covering 2014, which showed that women carried a greater burden of unpaid work that year. “On average, men do 16 hours a week of such unpaid work … [compared with] the 26 hours of unpaid work done by women a week,” they said.

In 2016, transport, such as driving to work, accounted for 28.8% of the total value of unpaid work, with childcare the second greatest burden – “equivalent to £5,358 per person in 2016”.