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The number of under-16s living in households without adults in employment rose to 145,000 (15.8 per cent of under- 16s) this year from 141,000 (15.3 per cent) last year.

The rise was reported, despite Scotland experiencing a slight decrease in the number of workless households over the past year.

That trend was also seen across the UK, where a fall in the number of people classed as economically inactive resulted in a decline in the number of households where no-one is working falling to fewer than four million.

Figures released yesterday by the Office of National Statistics, showed there was a fall of 38,000, or 0.3 per cent, in the quarter to June this year to 3.88 million, the equivalent of 18.8 per cent of all households.

A total of 1.84 million children lived in these so-called workless households.

The percentage of households where all adults were in work was 53.5 per cent, up 0.5 per cent from a year earlier.

Of the UK’s nations and regions, the north-east of England had the highest percentage of workless households (24.9 per cent), while the number of households in which no adult has ever worked was 370,000, up 18,000 from a year earlier.

In Scotland, there were 359,000 workless households in June, compared with 411,000 the previous year – a decline in the percentage from 22.6 per cent in June 2010 to 19.8 per cent.

The fall was given a cautious welcome by those fighting Scottish poverty, but there was a feeling more needed to be done.

Peter Kelly, the director of the Glasgow-based Poverty Alliance, said: “These figures tally with the experiences we have been picking up from the organisations that we are working with.

“People are getting back into jobs, and that’s undoubtedly a good thing. But the rate of decline of worklessness is not as quick as we would like.

“This is a long-standing problem, which is not just caused by the recent recession, so it is going to take a long time to tackle,” said Mr Kelly. “In some of our communities, the figures are going to be much higher than the Scottish-wide figure, so there is still a long way to go to overcome this problem completely.

“One issue that we have to keep an eye on is the question of what kind of jobs people are going into.”

Mr Kelly said that if people were going into part-time or low-paid work, their earnings would not be enough to make a huge difference to their lives.

“Sometimes you have to question the extent to which giving someone a job can lift them out of the low-income bracket. We want to see people moving into jobs that lift them out of poverty. There is probably more that the Scottish Government and local government can do to ensure that people are getting the kind of support they need to get back into the labour market.”

In the UK as a whole, the largest fall in the percentage of people living in workless households was for those aged 50 to 64, down 0.4 per cent to 21.1 per cent while for those aged 16 to 24 the figure increased by 0.6 per cent to 14.2 per cent.

The biggest fall in workless households was driven by an 82,000 cut in the number of people classed as inactive, while there was a 37,000 increase in the numbers of unemployed.

The percentage of children in workless households was 15.8 per cent, down 0.3 per cent from a year earlier. Over the same period, the percentage of children in working households increased slightly by 0.1 per cent to 51.4 per cent.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “These latest figures provide further evidence that the measures introduced by the Scottish Government to support employment growth and boost the recovery are having a positive impact.

“We have a higher employment rate, lower unemployment and lower inactivity rate than the UK as a whole at present.

“However, we cannot afford to be complacent, and we need the UK to act now and introduce an action plan or flexibility to protect the recovery.”

The government spokesman added: “This should focus on increased capital investment, access to finance, and measures to boost economic security and consumer confidence.”