Good work is good for you: the link between job quality and life expectancy for North East workers

HLE is the average number of years that a person can expect to live in good health, and is used as a key indicator of wider societal well-being.  

The figures, published in April, highlighted that over the last decade, HLE fell by around two years across the whole of the UK. This drop means that HLE has now fallen below the state pension age of 66 in more than 90% of areas, creating a significant and widening gap between health and work. 

This gap is even more pronounced depending on where you live and how you live. HLE has a strong association with deprivation. The difference in HLE between the most and least deprived areas now stands at a staggering 19.4 years for males and 20.3 years for females.

And yet again the North East is hit hard. Our region has three local authorities in the 10% most deprived areas in England, 6 in the 20% most deprived and all twelve reside in the 50% most deprived. Naturally, this manifests in our local figures, with the lowest HLE for women in the country found in Hartlepool, at 51 years.

Unsurprisingly, given those statistics, our region also reports one of the highest rates of economic inactivity, with just under a third (28.3%) of people not working due to ill-health, caring responsibilities or early retirement. Long-term sickness is the biggest driver of economic inactivity, representing a third of those out of the workforce in the North East.

This is not a sustainable situation. Some of our most vulnerable individuals are falling out of work due to poor health more than a decade before retirement age - and some substantially more than that. This has a too high human and business cost.

But, what is quite clear, from the report and the very definition of HLE, is that it is not inevitable. The key levers for change, are strategic policy and interventions – underpinned by a whole system approach requiring collaboration from all stakeholders; led by concerted cross-government action.

Work is one of the major determinants of health, so increasing the quality of jobs and workplaces is a fundamental. Good work is good for you. This is where our region is ahead of the curve, the TUC NEY&H coordinated Better Health at Work Award works with hundreds of employers every year to grow and embed health-conducive workplaces that keep workers well. 

Prevention is better than cure; making health and wellbeing business as usual is both a moral and business imperative. We see the tangible impact this integration can have for the employers and workers engaged with the programme and are keen to give as many of our regional workplaces the tools for the job as possible. 

Find out more about the Better Health at Work Award. 

Originally printed in the Newcastle Journal on the 8 June 2026.