The Times had a load of more recealing than usual stats analysis from the OBR yesterday, including this on page 2 (subsequently barely mentioned or not at all):
"The rise in people suffering from illness after the coronavirus emergency has dealt an annual blow to the public finances of almost £16 billion ...
"The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated that the jump in benefit payments caused by the pandemic, combined with a decline in tax receipts, had added £15.7 billion to the state’s annual borrowing, equivalent to 0.6 per cent of the UK’s GDP.
“'As of early 2023, there were 2.6 million working-age people — 6.1 per cent of the working-age population — outside the labour force for health reasons, making this group, for the first time, the single-largest segment of the economically inactive population,' the watchdog said.
Since the worst of the pandemic, there had been a 440,000 increase in the cohort of people who blamed long-term sickness for being economically inactive by early this year.
The number of people who are struggling with illness but continuing to work has risen by 490,000.
"This wave of sickness has led to a £6.8 billion increase to the annual welfare benefits bill, including a rise of £4.5 billion in spending on incapacity benefits and £2.3 billion on disability benefits. Lost taxes amounted to a further £8.9 billion, the OBR said."
So Long Covid is causing a huge problem for the economy, which there's a certain amount of panic about among the boss class, but no-one wants to make a big deal about it cos the whole existence of a pandemic thing is supposed to be memory holed and they can't really pretend disability benefits are a wastrel's paradise having spent the last decade turning it into a complete nightmare.
