Proportion of people claiming Universal Credit who are in employment. This is based on the count of the number of people on Universal Credit on the second Thursday of each month (completed the Universal Credit claim process and accepted their Claimant Commitment) and have not had a closure of their claim recorded for this spell. A closure of their claim would be recorded either at the request of the individual or if their entitlement to Universal Credit ends, for example, if they no longer satisfy the financial conditions to receive Universal Credit as they have capital over the threshold. To allow sufficient time for earnings information to be gathered on all claimants, figures for the latest month in the series will not be available until the next release. Figures provided for starts show the Jobcentre Plus office recorded at the start of the claim, whereas the figures for the number of people on Universal Credit are representative of the current Jobcentre Plus office that the claimant is attending. It is possible for people to have started on Universal Credit in one office and have moved to another office during their claim, and for this reason, the number of people on Universal Credit can be higher than the starts figure for any particular office, however it is more noticeable when numbers are low. You may be eligible to get Universal Credit if you’re on a low income or out of work, 18 or over (there are some exceptions if you’re 16 to 17), you’re under State Pension age (or your partner is), you and your partner have £16,000 or less in savings between you, and you live in the UK. Universal Credit has replaced Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for most people. It is still possible to claim JSA if you are 18 or over and under State Pension age. As long as you are actively looking for a full-time job and are out of work, or are working less than 16 hours a week. These standalone JSA claims are separately reported. Statistical disclosure control has been applied with Stat-Xplore, which guards against the identification of an individual claimant.Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.

Universal Credit: Claimants

Proportion of people claiming Universal Credit who are in employment. This is based on the count of the number of people on Universal Credit on the second Thursday of each month (completed the Universal Credit claim process and accepted their Claimant Commitment) and have not had a closure of their claim recorded for this spell. A closure of their claim would be recorded either at the request of the individual or if their entitlement to Universal Credit ends, for example, if they no longer satisfy the financial conditions to receive Universal Credit as they have capital over the threshold. To allow sufficient time for earnings information to be gathered on all claimants, figures for the latest month in the series will not be available until the next release. Figures provided for starts show the Jobcentre Plus office recorded at the start of the claim, whereas the figures for the number of people on Universal Credit are representative of the current Jobcentre Plus office that the claimant is attending. It is possible for people to have started on Universal Credit in one office and have moved to another office during their claim, and for this reason, the number of people on Universal Credit can be higher than the starts figure for any particular office, however it is more noticeable when numbers are low. You may be eligible to get Universal Credit if you’re on a low income or out of work, 18 or over (there are some exceptions if you’re 16 to 17), you’re under State Pension age (or your partner is), you and your partner have £16,000 or less in savings between you, and you live in the UK. Universal Credit has replaced Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for most people. It is still possible to claim JSA if you are 18 or over and under State Pension age. As long as you are actively looking for a full-time job and are out of work, or are working less than 16 hours a week. These standalone JSA claims are separately reported. Statistical disclosure control has been applied with Stat-Xplore, which guards against the identification of an individual claimant.Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.

Universal Credit: Claimants not in employment

The number of Universal Credit claimants includes those who have started Universal Credit (completed the Universal Credit claim process and accepted their Claimant Commitment) and have not had a closure of their claim recorded for this spell, up to the 'count date' (second Thursday in each month). A closure of their claim would be recorded either at the request of the individual or if their entitlement to Universal Credit ends, for example, if they no longer satisfy the financial conditions to receive Universal Credit as they have capital over £16,000. Please note that figures for the latest month are provisional and will be finalised in the next release (the expectation is that the overall provisional figure will be within two per cent of the final figure). The figures include a breakdown on whether the claimant is in employment or not in employment. This figure is only provided for the revised month, and is not available for the latest provisional month in the series. An individual on Universal Credit at the count date will be recorded as in employment if they have employment earnings within the Universal Credit assessment period which spans the count date. They may not be in employment precisely on the count date.Statistical disclosure control has been applied with Stat-Xplore, which guards against the identification of an individual claimant.

🇬🇧 영국

The headline measure of the claimant count has been changed to include some claimants of Universal Credit (UC) as well as Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) claimants, resulting in upward revisions to the claimant count back to May 2013. Previously the headline measure did not include UC claimants. The claimant count measures the number of people claiming unemployment related benefits. Between October 1996 and April 2013, the only unemployment related benefit in the UK was JSA and the claimant count was therefore a count of the number of people claiming JSA. There have been revisions to the claimant count back to January 2012, resulting from the annual review of the seasonal adjustment process, and revisions to national and regional claimant count rates back to 2001, resulting from updating the denominators to take account of the latest estimates of Workforce Jobs. There have been further revisions to the claimant count back to May 2013 resulting from incorporating estimates of Universal Credit.

Universal Credit: Number of claimants on caseload

This dataset was collected as part of a qualitative case study exploring the behavioural effects and lived experiences of claimants interacting with the Universal Credit (UC) system in the UK. The research examines how digitalisation, conditionality, and frontline service delivery shape access to welfare support and influence claimants’ pathways toward financial stability and employment. The dataset includes anonymised transcripts from in-depth interviews with UC recipients and frontline stakeholders, and supports broader analysis on welfare reform, personalised support, and socio-digital inequalities under austerity.

Claimant Count by sex including Jobseeker's Allowance and out of work Universal Credit claimants, UK, published monthly. These are official statistics in development.

Automating Universal Credit studies the automated and digital aspects of Universal Credit (UC), a social security benefit in the UK. Recipients mainly interact with UC staff through an online account, and their monthly entitlement is calculated by an automated, means-testing system that factors their personal circumstances and monthly income if they work. The study used qualitative longitudinal methods, which allowed us to understand how UC claimants experience UC in near real-time, including the systems' unexpected behaviours and errors. The study has achieved two main high-level findings. First, we found that Universal Credit creates temporal mandates by applying a fixed, monthly assessment period of earnings for working claimants. We developed the concept of temporal punitiveness to describe how this monthly period creates problems for claimants who are paid their wages on a weekly/bi-weekly basis; due to the rules of calculation within the system, this misalignment may lead to the loss of entitlement. Likewise, parents have a very narrow timeframe to submit for childcare reimbursement; if parents do not submit within certain parameters, they may not be reimbursed. Second, we argue that administrative burdens may originate at the technical layer that citizens interact with to receive a service. To evidence this argument, we identify how the mechanism for reporting earnings data to UC creates administrative burdens for working UC claimants: we found that several claimants' earnings data reported to UC for the automatic calculation was wrong and thus, claimants needed to start a dispute process with the DWP. A FOI request we submitted to the DWP revealed that this happens to 5-6% of claimants each year. UC’s automated tools function at times as gatekeepers to social security entitlements, raising concerns about the current design of UC as a form of social security.In the UK, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) uses automated systems for Universal Credit (UC), the country's largest social security payment, to determine eligibility, calculate monthly benefits and detect fraud. Unique to UC, automation determines monthly pay based on a complex set of means-testing variables and data linkages with other departments. What are the policy rationales behind UC’s system? How do claimants experience the monthly means-tested payment? And how does the system shape the way DWP carries out its welfare policies? This project contributes to our understandings of digital welfare broadly, exploring how claimants experience these systems and can inform their technical design. During the first six months of the study we interviewed 18 members of staff at charities and civil society activists across the UK. The remainder of the study involved Scottish claimants who were in-work and took part in qualitative longitudinal research (QLLR) to understand the experiences of Universal Credit recipients interacting with the automated aspects of this benefit for six months to a year. 25 claimants took part; we carried out entry, mid-way, and exit interviews (47 total) combined with prompted bi-weekly text message updates from participants on their interactions with UC; many would send back text responses and screen shots of the UC account, both of which we captured as field notes (145 pages total). We also carried out one-off interviews with 27 claimants who did not qualify for the longitudinal study because they were not required to work to qualify for UC. We recruited all participants through local Scottish charities.

As of January 2025, there were estimated to be approximately 7.4 million people on Universal Credit in Great Britain, of which over 1.12 million were aged between 35 and 39, the highest of the provided age groups.