Understanding the uneven geography of Britain’s economic inactivity crisis since Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper extends the concept of regional resilience to address economic inactivity as a key economic outcome, and to consider health and demography as sources of regional vulnerability and resilience. Economic inactivity in Great Britain rose sharply following Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, but in geographically uneven ways. Results indicate that changes to local economic inactivity are strongly associated with changes to health and ageing of the labour force, but not with changes to immigration linked to Brexit. In previous economic crises, local economic inactivity has risen in response to contractions in labour demand. In contrast, the current economic inactivity crisis has its roots in supply-side shocks to labour supply, chiefly driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and labour force ageing, although Brexit may have affected some rural economies.