Using the power of linked data to understand factors preventing people from working Nearly 9 million working-age people in the UK were not working or looking for work that is, economically inactive from May to July 2023. This figure includes more than 2.5 million people inactive due to long-term sickness, an increase of half-a-million people since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Emma Rourke explains how linked, population-level data can improve our understanding of the interplay between health and work, with the goal of improving the wellbeing of individuals and the economy. | 