{
 "id": "universal-credit-people",
 "title": "People on Universal Credit, Great Britain",
 "category": "welfare",
 "summary": "People on Universal Credit in Great Britain each month over the last five years.",
 "unit": "count",
 "chart": "line",
 "volatile": false,
 "status": "Official statistics, not accredited",
 "notes": [
  "People on Universal Credit on the second Thursday of each month. DWP revises recent months as late claims are processed. The hub shows the last five years; Stat-Xplore holds earlier months.",
  "DWP's total, like its published figures, includes cases abroad and cases whose address is not known, so the nations may not add up exactly to it.",
  "DWP adds a small random amount to every figure in Stat-Xplore to protect confidentiality (it calls this Introduced Random Error) and publishes no bound for it, so nations and regions may not add up exactly to the total. The verification page shows the gaps for information.",
  "Each refresh compares the latest month with the headline of DWP's GOV.UK release, which is rounded, so it checks that month's total; every month is checked against Stat-Xplore itself, queried twice.",
  "The full series is on DWP's Stat-Xplore (stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk), where anyone with a free account can build the same table."
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "publisher": "Department for Work and Pensions, Stat-Xplore",
  "publisher_url": "https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-work-pensions",
  "source_page": "https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/universal-credit-statistics",
  "licence": "OGL-3.0",
  "licence_name": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
  "licence_url": "https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/",
  "attribution": "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.",
  "retrieved_at": "2026-10-30T12:02:23Z",
  "raw_files": [
   {
    "name": "table.json",
    "url": "https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/rest/v1/table",
    "sha256": "e80ee25531af1163a763370288f0850b99894be240242ad2d9ed39e43e313bae",
    "bytes": 54110,
    "content_type": "application/json"
   }
  ]
 },
 "meta": {
  "latest_period": "2026-05",
  "frequency": "monthly",
  "coverage": "Great Britain",
  "areas_period": "2026-05",
  "areas": [
   {
    "x": "Great Britain",
    "v": 8359744.0
   },
   {
    "x": "England",
    "v": 7222784.0
   },
   {
    "x": "Wales",
    "v": 429688.0
   },
   {
    "x": "Scotland",
    "v": 697278.0
   },
   {
    "x": "North East",
    "v": 403362.0
   },
   {
    "x": "North West",
    "v": 1085689.0
   },
   {
    "x": "Yorkshire and The Humber",
    "v": 772888.0
   },
   {
    "x": "East Midlands",
    "v": 596680.0
   },
   {
    "x": "West Midlands",
    "v": 860941.0
   },
   {
    "x": "East of England",
    "v": 679625.0
   },
   {
    "x": "London",
    "v": 1315373.0
   },
   {
    "x": "South East",
    "v": 919359.0
   },
   {
    "x": "South West",
    "v": 588867.0
   }
  ]
 },
 "headline": {
  "label": "Great Britain",
  "value": 8359744.0,
  "period": "2026-05"
 },
 "series": [
  {
   "name": "Great Britain",
   "points": [
    {
     "x": "2021-06",
     "v": 5888758.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2021-07",
     "v": 5842565.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2021-08",
     "v": 5806042.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2021-09",
     "v": 5738896.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2021-10",
     "v": 5697300.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2021-11",
     "v": 5652946.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2021-12",
     "v": 5605512.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-01",
     "v": 5563333.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-02",
     "v": 5560735.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-03",
     "v": 5533417.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-04",
     "v": 5546129.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-05",
     "v": 5541838.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-06",
     "v": 5560777.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-07",
     "v": 5620044.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-08",
     "v": 5660951.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-09",
     "v": 5684229.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-10",
     "v": 5731192.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-11",
     "v": 5756781.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2022-12",
     "v": 5780104.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-01",
     "v": 5799603.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-02",
     "v": 5836325.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-03",
     "v": 5853185.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-04",
     "v": 5896704.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-05",
     "v": 5930392.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-06",
     "v": 5965194.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-07",
     "v": 6011281.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-08",
     "v": 6043174.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-09",
     "v": 6096218.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-10",
     "v": 6160471.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-11",
     "v": 6220120.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2023-12",
     "v": 6311416.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-01",
     "v": 6359305.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-02",
     "v": 6458747.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-03",
     "v": 6598882.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-04",
     "v": 6677225.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-05",
     "v": 6757645.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-06",
     "v": 6844817.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-07",
     "v": 6904613.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-08",
     "v": 6968805.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-09",
     "v": 7078809.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-10",
     "v": 7163713.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-11",
     "v": 7276174.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2024-12",
     "v": 7355479.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-01",
     "v": 7391758.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-02",
     "v": 7515081.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-03",
     "v": 7595104.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-04",
     "v": 7679452.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-05",
     "v": 7736489.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-06",
     "v": 7851487.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-07",
     "v": 7933923.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-08",
     "v": 8041126.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-09",
     "v": 8117635.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-10",
     "v": 8207815.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-11",
     "v": 8302781.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2025-12",
     "v": 8343654.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2026-01",
     "v": 8322836.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2026-02",
     "v": 8341941.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2026-03",
     "v": 8289214.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2026-04",
     "v": 8316522.0
    },
    {
     "x": "2026-05",
     "v": 8359744.0
    }
   ]
  }
 ]
}