FOI reference: FOI-2024-2388
You asked
I'm looking for data around the breakdown of those on welfare benefits, PIP etc in the UK for the past 10 years. I would require this broken down by ethnicity and by migration status please.
We said
Thank you for your query regarding breakdowns of benefit claimants in the UK.
We do not regularly produce detailed claimant information across welfare benefits.
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) does collect information from which it would be possible to produce estimates by benefit, ethnicity and migrant status. However, due to small sample sizes, such breakdowns are likely to have a high degree of uncertainty.
If you still wish to request a tailored analysis to be produced from the Labour Force Survey you can contact our Social Surveys team. Please note that we may charge for this service, in line with our charging policy, depending on the amount of time taken to develop the analyses and undertake quality and disclosure control processes.
However, you may instead wish to contact the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) regarding these data. They hold the administrative data relating to benefit claimants and publish a wide range of statistics based on claimant administrative data. They will be able to tell you what is and is not possible from the administrative data, which is likely to give you a far more accurate measure than LFS survey estimates. The DWP team can be contacted through their benefit statistics email address.