Working and not working: what Census 2021 RM021 shows by passport group

Burnley Census 2021. 16+ residents. Economic activity status, by passport held.

NOMIS Census 2021 RM021 (“Economic activity by passport group”). 148 LAs have data; Burnley is one. The columns are the canonical Census definitions: in employment (with and without full-time students), unemployed, economically inactive.

Passport group	In work	Unemployed	Inactive	Of which “looking after family”
UK passport	57.0%	3.2%	39.8%	~5%
EU passport	75.9%	5.8%	18.3%	~3%
Middle East / Asian passport	35.3%	5.2%	59.6%	60.8% of the inactive
No passport held	26.8%	4.8%	68.4%	~6%

The story is in the inactive column.

For UK-passport holders, “economically inactive” is almost entirely retirement. Burnley has 16,297 UK-passport retired residents, 70% of the inactive UK-passport population. That is a demographic story (an older workforce) not a participation story.

For No-passport residents (mostly UK-born older British nationals who never held one), inactive is again mostly retirement. The 68.4% inactivity rate reflects an older sub-population.

For Middle East / Asian passport holders, inactivity has a completely different cause. Of the 809 Middle East / Asian-passport adults in Burnley who are economically inactive, 492 are recorded as “looking after family”. That is 60.8% of the inactive total, and 23.4% of the entire Middle East / Asian-passport adult population.

For EU passport holders the picture is sharply different: 75.9% in employment, 18.3% inactive. EU migration to Burnley sits at the working end of the spectrum.

Why this matters

When commentary discusses “immigrant employment”, the headline figure usually averages across all foreign-born groups. RM021 shows that average hides a 40-percentage-point gap between EU-passport (76% in work) and Middle East / Asian-passport (35% in work) populations. The gap is not a one-off Burnley artefact. It shows up at similar magnitudes in every Lancashire-type LA where the data is published.

The “looking after family” code is, in Census methodology, the female partner in a single-earner household who is not seeking work. The line between cultural choice and economic constraint is not legible in the data and is not speculated on here. What is legible: this is the largest single use of working-age labour in the Middle East / Asian-passport Burnley population.

What to do with this

For local-government planning, the relevant variable is not the average employment rate. It is the inactivity profile. Burnley’s working-age inactive population is 32,463 people. The biggest single subgroup is 16,297 retired UK-passport holders (a pensions and adult social care issue). The next-largest is the 4,664 “looking after family” residents across all passport groups (a childcare and labour-supply issue). Different policy levers.

For demographic projection, the in-work rate is the binding constraint on income tax revenue per LA. Areas where the Middle East / Asian-passport share is rising fastest are also, all else equal, areas where the per-capita in-work rate falls, independent of any change in wages or hours.

Sources. NOMIS NM_2121_1 (Census 2021 RM021), Burnley E07000117. Total residents aged 16+: 75,199 (Burnley row total). The same RM021 data is available for 147 other English LAs; Census 2021 published it where ethnic-group cell counts pass disclosure control. Replicating this analysis across all 148 is the natural next piece.