'No-one in our house works'
| By Paula Dear BBC News |
With redundancies rising and job vacancies shrinking, unemployment is back in the headlines. But for millions it never went away. As part of a series on Britain's jobless, one family explains how and why lack of work has touched their lives.
Elizabeth Malcolm, 43, has never had a job. She lives in a two-bedroom council flat in Glasgow with her three children, one grandchild, two cats and a hamster.
Neither of her two working-age children has a job.
 | BRITAIN'S JOBLESS Our series asks, who are Britain's jobless? Read more about the issues - Britain's jobless: who cares? - here Interviews with five people who are out of work will be published on the BBC News website in December and January Week beginning 15 December - ask a government minister your questions about unemployment  |
The family is what the statistics gatherers call a "workless household" - one of three million in the country. In reality it's not quite so easy to put every jobless person into a neat little box. This is their story.
Elizabeth, known as "Biff" to family and friends, wishes now that she had got into work or college back in 1980, when she left school at 15.
It was hardly a great time to be a jobseeker, especially living in Easterhouse, a part of Glasgow long synonymous with deprivation and unemployment. But she concedes that she doesn't really know why she didn't get a job, and that there was an element of just "not getting round" to it.
She doesn't think school wanted her to stay on because she "wasn't too bright" and used to bunk off a lot.
Without any qualifications she assumed she wasn't able to follow her chosen path and join the Army. She never actually made it to the recruitment office to ask.
|  I did try, but nobody took me on  Elizabeth Malcolm |
After signing on the dole, she was nagged to find a job by her parents - who both worked until redundancy and illness stopped them in their 50s - and says she tried to find something.
"I did try, but nobody took me on," she says.
By 17 she had met the father of her three children and by 22 had their first son William. From then on family, home life and dealing with a failing relationship took over, she says.
While Elizabeth "feels angry" at herself for not getting into work when she was younger, at the same time she believes looking after the kids and the house has been a job in itself. Labour market survey figures for the last quarter showed more than two million women gave the same reason for not working.
Now a lone parent, she shares her bedroom with her son Jon, 13, daughter Danielle, 17, and Danielle's son Rhys, 11 months.
|  Next generation: More on William, Danielle and Jon  |
In picturesWilliam, 21, who served in the Army for three-and-a-half years and went to Iraq and Afghanistan, sleeps in the small second bedroom.
The family survives on a combination of Income Support and Child Tax Credits, claimed by both Elizabeth and Danielle. Both also receive the universal Child Benefit for one child each. It all amounts to about
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