Revealed: True value of people who stay at home and do the chores

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Brits are doing £1.4 trillion of unpaid housework each year, according to official figures.

The work includes childcare, adult care, transport, housework and volunteering services and equates to £18,932 per person.

The Office for National Statistics’ 2016 figures found the total figure equates to more than the total value of the UK’s retail and manufacturing output combined.

The study found that unpaid transport services such as driving yourself and others to work accounted for the largest proportion of the total figure.

Childcare services came in second, equivalent to £5,358 per person.

In 2016, consumer spending on goods and services used as inputs to household service work totalled £2,651.

Richard Tonkin, assistant director at ONS said: “GDP is without question one of our most important economic indicators. It tells us about the size and shape of the economy.

“GDP is however, incomplete. It is often and incorrectly used as an all-encompassing proxy for people’s living standards, something it was never designed for and which it doesn’t fully capture.

“It has therefore been important to us to develop and publish a wider range of measures, capturing those things not included within GDP.”

ONS states that since 2005, the value of adult care, childcare, laundry and transport services have all grown by over 50 percent.

It found that gross value of unpaid adult care totalled £59.5 billion and amounted to 7.9 billion hours.

According to ONS, the value of unpaid adult care is increasingly being driven by those requiring full-time care.

Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/revealed-true-value-of-people-who-stay-at-home-and-do-the-chores-a3952011.html

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