The number of people not working in the UK due to long-term sickness has risen to a new record, official figures show.
More than two and a half million are not working due to health problems, the Office for National Statistics said.
It blamed an increase in mental health issues in younger people and people suffering back and neck pain, possibly due to home working, for the rise.
Typically, for every 13 people currently working, one person is long-term sick.
Since the start of the Covid pandemic, there were "well over 400,000 more people outside of the labour market due to ill health," Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the ONS, told the BBC's Today Programme.
As well as an increase in mental health conditions and back and neck pains, Mr Morgan said there had also been "an increase in the category that includes post-viral fatigue, so perhaps long Covid having an impact".
Who are the millions of Britons not working?
Are wages keeping up with inflation?
One of the reasons why the UK economy has been doing less well than other developed nations has been the case of the missing workers, after millions stopped working during the pandemic.
Getting these people back to work is a key part of the government's plan to get the economy growing again with changes to the rules around health-related benefits and universal credit in the March Budget aimed at helping to address the shortage of workers.
The latest figures show mixed progress on this front. Significant numbers of students, carers and even some retired people have started looking for work again, pushing the inactivity rate - the key measure of people not in work - down to 21% - the lowest level in three years.
However, the rise in the number of people too ill to work is likely to worry policymakers.
"We should be concerned by the high number of people who are economically inactive because they are sick, and progress on tackling inactivity overall is too slow," said Neil Carberry, chief executive at the industry body the Recruitment and Employment Confederation.
"It is a year since the ONS reported on high worklessness, labour shortages and high inflation and too little has changed. This is holding the economy back by constraining companies' ability to grow."
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