Anne Devlin

Over a quarter of people aged 16-64 in Northern Ireland are economically inactive – neither in employment nor actively seeking work– according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the autumn of 2025. This challenge is replicated across the UK, but it is particularly acute in Northern Ireland.

Corresponding Author Anne Marie Devlin University College Cork Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Anne Marie Devlin, 1.13a O'Rahilly Building, University College Cork, College Road, Cork T12 K8AF, Ireland. Email: amdevlin@ucc.ie Search for more papers by this author

Northern Ireland has historically had the highest economic inactivity of the four constituent nations of the UK. This has been driven by particularly high rates of economic inactivity due to long-term sickness or disability. In a previous Economics Observatory article, we detailed how inactivity in Northern Ireland had increased year-on-year in 2021 despite previously being on a downward trend. That reversal is likely to have been a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.