Official : One-third of the UK’s unemployed are now from ethnic minority backgrounds

Brexit Facts4EU’s analysis shows this proportion has DOUBLED in the last 20 years

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2025

Unemployment rates are far higher amongst some ethnic minority communities

In the last 20 years the proportion of the UK’s unemployed from ethnic (generally non-white) groups in our society has doubled. This is an extraordinary statistic and yet it has barely been reported – until now. The facts get even starker when looking at the balance between men and women amongst the minority ethnic population.

In Part II of this Brexit Facts4EU.Org series on the UK’s population explosion and immigration crisis, we analyse to what extent ethnicity is relevant when looking at people’s working or non-working lives. And it turns out ethnicity is very relevant indeed.

Until recently, analysis of any type of data along the lines of ethnicity was liable - at best - to result in accusations of racism and having social media posts banned, or – at worst - attracting the attentions of Britain’s thought police resulting in a charge of a ‘non-crime hate incident’. This applied to individuals as well as to serious organisations such as ours, who naturally felt this was a category of data worth exploring in the same way that categories such as age or gender might be investigated. This is now changing, as the population/immigration debate has gone ‘mainstream’.

A major Brexit Facts4EU.Org series
Immigration and the UK's Population Explosion

PART I - 11 million reasons the public won’t let the UK’s politicians off the hook on immigration
PART II (this report) - Immigration and ethnicity – employment - age and gender disparities
PART III - Immigration and crime – the offending statistics troubling the public
PART IV - Hotels, hostels, barges, or camps? And benefits – what are we offering migrants to come to the UK?
PART V - EU's effect on UK immigration – Deportations and challenges of the ECHR, the UN, and our legal system
PART VI - The main party leaders comment on our reports

We plan to cover all the above topics in the coming days and weeks, in between our reports on newsworthy events.

Ethnicity, age, gender – and those not directly contributing economically to the UK

In this series we also look at sub-sections of ethnicity, in particular the gender difference in the white and ethnic minority populations when it comes to working behaviour.

In all of this, it must be stressed we are analysing the data provided by the official bodies using their terminology, and we do NOT imply any criticisms of any particular population groupings. We are analysing and reporting the facts, not making value judgements.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

1. The doubling in the proportion of the unemployed who come from ethnic groups

  • 2004 : 16.6%
  • Sept 2024 : 33.2%

[Source : Office for National Statistics.]

The proportion of the unemployed who are ‘non-white’ has doubled in 20 years.
One-third of those unemployed in the UK are now from minority ethnic groups.

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2025 - click to enlarge

GB News covered this Facts4EU.Org special report

We have been sharing our findings with GB News, the UK's fastest-growing news channel, to ensure the widest possible audience. Below is a short clip from the Martin Daubney show about this report.

‘Diversity’ - The differing proportions of unemployed of the differing ethnic groups

Firstly, the most basic information to know when viewing the charts is how ‘unemployed’ is defined.

“The unemployment rate is the proportion of the economically active population who are unemployed. Someone is economically active if they are in work (employed) or if they are looking for and available for work (unemployed). Otherwise the person is economically inactive: not in work and not looking for work.”

- House of Commons Library, 2024

There is considerable variation observed in the different ethnic groups into which the Office for National Statistics divides the population. When viewing our analysis and charts it must be noted that these figures are estimates and can be distorted by many factors, including: those who ‘prefer not to say’, the differing classifications used by the devolved governments, the response rates of different groups, and the changing methodology from the ONS over the years.

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Below is a chart we have created from raw ONS data, showing the latest proportions of unemployed people from the main white and minority ethnic backgrounds.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

2. The unemployment rates for the different ethnic groupings of the population

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2025 - click to enlarge<
[Source: ONS Labour Force survey, 2024.]

How the unemployment rates vary between ethnic groups

1.53 million people aged 16+ were unemployed in September 2024. Of these, 1.02 million (66.7%) are classified as being from a White ethnic background and 508,000 (33.3%) were from a minority ethnic background.

It can therefore be said that one-third of the UK’s unemployed are from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The average overall UK unemployment rate was 4.2% in the calendar year to September 2024, but this differs when considering the breakdown between ethnic groups. People from a White ethnic background had the lowest unemployment rate (3.5%), and people from ‘Mixed or Multiple’ and Pakistani ethnic backgrounds had the highest rate (9.8%).

‘Sex and ethnicity’ – We prefer to call this gender and ethnicity

When the topic of the gender differences in the ethnic communities is raised in official reports, we have seen the sub-heading of “Sex and Ethnicity”. A more accurate way of describing this, (albeit probably generating fewer media headlines for us), is “Ethnicity and Gender”.

Below we have broken out unemployment and ethnicity along gender lines. Specifically we noticed the sometimes wide disparities in the data, according to whether it was given as a total or broken down into ‘male / female’.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org Summary

3. Unemployment rates by ethnicity and gender – the female component

© Brexit Facts4EU.Org 2025 - click to enlarge
[Source: ONS Labour Force survey, 2024.]

Ethnicity and the gender divide

The unemployment rates for women when broken down by ethnicity show extraordinary variations.

Those of mixed ethnic or Pakistani origin are five times as likely to be declared as unemployed as white women. For Bangladeshis it is three times and for those from the black community their rate is double that of white women.

Overall, as a woman in the United Kingdom you are two-and-a-half times more likely to have unemployed status if you are from a minority ethnic origin than if you are a white woman.

NEXT REPORT

Next we look at a subject which has never before been reported on in detail – as far as we know – and that is the proportion of sub-sections of the population who are not ‘economically active’.

This figure is important for any economic analysis as it shows the numbers and proportions of those groupings of the population who are unemployed and also not looking for work. In other words they are not net contributors to the economy via taxation and nor are they intending to be.

Observations

We are pleased to tell readers that this report has been covered extensively by GB News who received an advance copy, ensuring the information it contains reaches the widest-possible audience.

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[ Sources: ONS | HoCL | Home Office ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Tues 04 Feb 2025

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