Keep Britain Working: Improving working-age health could generate £57bn

The report illustrates the scale of the problem around poor employee health, it stated that 300,000 people with a health condition leave work each year. It said that of those absent from work for four to six weeks, 96% have a chance of returning to work, after a year it drops to less than 50%. The initial report published in November 2025 detailed that the state faces an "unsustainable cost" of £212bn per year through lost output, 7% of GDP. The report said that returning working-age health to 2014 levels could generate £57bn of additional annual output, around 2% of GDP, and unloc...