Do over-fifties need to get back off the golf course and into work? That’s the narrative that ministers have been pushing recently, with Jeremy Hunt saying later life ‘doesn’t just have to be about going to the golf course’. Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride is conducting a review of the factors keeping people out of the workplace in time for next month’s Budget.

But a report out today from pensions consultancy LCP suggests ministers might be barking up the wrong tree. LCP’s analysis points out that there are fewer people of working age who are retired now than at the start of the pandemic, and that the missing workers are more likely to be long-term sick. Less golf course, more NHS waiting room.

The report says while the increase in economic inactivity is now 516,000, the number in the ‘retired’ category has fallen, but the number of people who are ‘long-term sick’ has risen by 353,000 since the start of the pandemic, and this accounts or more than half of the growth in inactivity over that period. It adds:

The rise in long-term sickness seems to be because more people are ‘flowing on’ to long-term sickness, particularly those previously classed as ‘short-term sick’; this could reflect NHS pressures as those who would otherwise have been treated or had their chronic condition better managed and able to work now find themselves ‘long-term sick’ as they wait for treatment or live permanently in poorer health.

It suggests that the government should look at local data to see if NHS bottlenecks are causing people to stay economically inactive for longer.

This is something Chloe Smith became interested in when she was work and pensions secretary. There was potential to move economically inactive workers higher up the NHS waiting lists. It’s unlikely the idea faded away when Smith left government: for one thing, it was praised by James Forsyth when he was in this parish rather than working for Rishi Sunak in No. 10. There is also increasing political pressure from Labour: shadow work and pensions secretary Jon Ashworth and his colleague Alison McGovern have been doing a lot of work on over-fifties. Elsewhere in the party there are frontbenchers interested in the other reasons for older women in this age group to stop work, including caring responsibilities for elderly parents or grandchildren.

All of this work assumes that these workers didn’t have as much choice or luxury about stopping work than the popular narrative about the ‘great resignation’ has suggested. In many cases their economic activity is in fact as a result of gaps in the state elsewhere, whether in the health system, social care or childcare. That’s a bit trickier to deal with than the relative appeal of golf.