Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people aged i) 18, ii) 19, iii) 20 and iv) 21 have been claiming Universal Credit for 18 months or longer.

The Department regularly publishes the number of people on Universal Credit by age and claim duration on Stat-Xplore. The provisional statistics for the number of people aged 18 to 21 who have been claiming UC for up to 18 months and for 18 months or more in October 2025 is shown in table 1.

Table 1: Number of People aged 18 to 21 on Universal Credit for up to 18 months and for 18 months or more, October 2025

Source: DWP Universal Credit Full Service (UCFS) Extract

Notes:

1. Cells in this table have had statistical disclosure control applied to avoid the release of confidential data. Due to adjustments totals may not be the sum of the individual cells.
2. Figures are a count of the number of people on Universal Credit on the second Thursday of each month, by age on that date, and are provisional.
3. The duration of an individual's current claim is calculated using the difference between the date the claimant signed their claimant commitment and the count date, and for this table is given in the following bands: Up to 18 months (0 to 547 days) and 18 months and above (548 days or more).
4. Users are advised that these statistics have ongoing work to improve the data quality and so are subject to revision.