The UK’s worklessness problem is a well-documented crisis. Over six million people in the UK – almost a sixth of the working-age population – are on out-of-work benefits, a number that has nearly doubled in the last seven years. The government’s attempt to begin to address this with the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill ended in fiasco. Diagnoses for the spectacular rise in worklessness vary from the long-term effects of the pandemic through to a lack of well-paid jobs to the perverse incentives within the welfare system. But one notable culprit seems to have escaped the attention of policy wonks: autism.

People with autism could therefore make up as much as a fifth of all out-of-work benefit claimants

There are between one and two million autistic people in the UK, over half of whom are undiagnosed. Some would suggest this figure is inflated: after all, in the mid-twentieth century, autism was thought to affect only 0.04 per cent of people. It has been caught up in broader concerns around overmedicalisation; a real phenomenon which is part of the reason behind the rise in the percentage of disability benefit claimants citing poor mental health as their primary condition. In 2002, poor mental health was the main condition for 25 per cent of claimants. This had risen to 44 per cent as of last year.

However, there are good reasons to think........

© The Spectator