One in thirty households in the United Kingdom received welfare payment benefits last year that were higher than the average worker’s salary, study finds.
Research published by the UK’s Conservative Party — which not long ago bowed out after 14 years in power — found that 625,618 households across the UK were handed more than £32,200 in welfare in 2025, the average annual salary of a British worker. Of the total, 16,000 households received more than £60,000 in welfare payments, which in Britain’s highly compressed income scales is a fair middle-class wage.
While the amount of households that received more than the average British worker’s payment in benefits last year is fractionally lower than the 667,278 documented during the 2023-2024 period, it still represents double than the 392,000 that received such levels of benefits between 2019 and 2020.
Between 2024-25, 267,000 households received more than £40,000 in yearly benefits, while 91,000 were paid more than £50,000..
Per the study’s findings, the amount of of working-age households receiving more than £30,000 in yearly benefits from the British state has surged by more than a third to 800,000 last year since the Department for Work and Pensions started using administrative income data instead of relying solely on surveys, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The study was conducted by British Conservative Member of Parliament and Shadow Minister for Policy Renewal and Development Neil O’Brien, who revealed in late March that foreign-born individuals are claiming nearly a billion British pounds in welfare benefits from the state per month.
Speaking with The Telegraph on Sunday, O’Brien said, “The real-terms growth and scale of really large benefit claims from working-age households make the case for a return to welfare reform stronger.”
“We need reforms across all types of benefit – and particularly the household benefit cap, which is no longer really constraining the growth of really large claims,” O’Brien stressed. “Some households are getting a lot more in benefits than the average person gets to take home after working full-time. We need a system that’s fair to taxpayers as well as those benefiting from it.”
The Conservatives did attempt to engage in some welfare reforms during their marathon 14 years in power to 2024, but the welfare bill, size of the state, and tax burden all nevertheless soared under their control, and many of the criticisms now levelled at the government by the party relate to problems they failed to tackle in office.
The UK Department for Work and Pensions pushed back against the figures and replied the figures presented by O’Brien in the study were an “overestimation,” with the Labour Party government affirming that the families receiving higher levels of benefits have the “highest level of need” with one or more family members under severe disability.
“The two per cent of households receiving this level of support have the highest needs, and require extra support,” a UK government spokesman said.
“The benefit cap exempts households where one or more residents have a severe disability requiring extra support and are among the most vulnerable in our society, and it is right that they receive it,” the spokesman continued.
Per the BBC, the Conservative Party has now vowed to introduce reforms that would stop households from being able to get unlimited benefits payments by limiting the total amount of benefit payments that working-age individuals can receive.
The proposal, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said, would “stop those who abuse the system getting almost unlimited welfare payments”.