According to the Office for National Statistics, one in seven children in Britain - almost 1.8m - now live in totally work-free households, the majority of them with a single parent.
The last year has shown virtually no change to the number of households where all adults are out of full-time work, and researchers found that 15.8% of all households in Britain containing at least one person of working age had no one in full-time employment - that means that there is complete unemployment in more than 3m families where at least one person should be able to work.
And while there are half a million more families living in the UK than when previously surveyed in 2003, there are 43,000 more working-age families with no one in employment.
The study - 'Work and Worklessness among households' - also discovered that 40% of all single-parent families have no one in employment.
David Lammy, minister for skills, recently spoke at an event run by LEAP, a charity working to get the long-term unemployed into work. He spoke of the cultural changes required by people who had not had a parent or family member in work. Lammy, himself brought up by a single mother, mentioned the examples and experiences missing from these people's lives, and of how difficult it would be for someone who had not grown up witnessing a work ethic to apply themselves to having and holding down a permanent job.
So what of the next generation? Who will teach them the discipline needed for the workplace?
