The different way of counting UC vs. legacy benefits accounts for most of the difference 

Out-of-work benefit claims as share of the 16-59/64 population.
The previous chart showed that trends in out-of-work benefit claims look much lower if we count consistently over time. This chart explains in more detail why my consistent series looks different from the DWP statistics.

This defines 'working-age' as women aged 16-59 and men aged 16-64 so that we can make consistent comparisons over time (the State Pension Age [SPA] for women began rising in 2010, and the SPA for men and women is now 66).
Chart: Ben Baumberg Geiger, 17/9/2025Source: Author's calculations based on various sources of official dataGet the dataCreated with Datawrapper