In the three months to June, there were 3.88m UK households without an employed adult, official figures have revealed.
This represented 18.8% of households and was a fall of 0.3%, or 38,000 households, on a year earlier, reported the Office for National Statistics.
The number of households in which no adult has ever worked was 370,000 in Q2, up 18,000 from a year earlier and 1.8m children living in workless households.
The ONS said that the 370,000 households in which no adult has ever worked, was the highest figure since it began keeping track 16 years ago.
The percentage of households where all adults worked was 53.5%, up 0.5% from a year earlier.
