Work Programme statistics
Statistics on people who joined the Work Programme, participants who achieved defined periods in work and participants who completed the programme.
The Work Programme statistical series has ended. This final release of statistics was published on 30 September 2020.
The Work Programme began in Great Britain in June 2011 and was part of a number of welfare to work reforms aimed at getting unemployed people into sustained work.
It used private and public companies, called Providers, to find work for claimants transferred to them from Jobcentre Plus at specified points in their claim. The Providers were primarily paid for defined outcomes related to sustained employment.
We also publish a number of more detailed data tables on the Work Programme in:
- Stat-Xplore – an online tool for exploring some of DWP’s main statistics. Use Stat-Xplore to create your own tables and charts
- Work Programme: cohort and time series data
Final release
This final release of statistics was published on 30 September 2020.
Previous releases
During the development of the final release (Work Programme statistical summary, data to June 2020), an error was detected in the releases published from April 2015 to March 2018. In those releases, for Sustainment Outcome payments, the wrong validation rates were applied to the contracts. This has been corrected in the final release and the back series has been revised. However, there may be a few small discrepancies when comparing Sustainment Outcome payments by contract in the September 2020 release to releases between April 2015 and March 2018. Read the Background Information Note for more information about this.
Consultation and feedback
Complete our Work Programme statistics questionnaire to tell us what you think about our statistics.
Join the ‘Welfare and benefits’ community at www.statsusernet.org.uk. We’ll post announcements and background information in this forum. You can also use the forum to discuss statistical issues with other users.
We ran a consultation in 2013 on how Work Programme statistics are presented. Read the outcome of this consultation below.