The number of children living in workless households also fell to 1.8 million from 1.84 million.
The policy being debated today will affect both, though workless households will lose most.
There is a separate target to reduce the proportion of children in workless households.
It means workless households will not receive more in benefits than the average earnings of working households.
In total, five million people aged 16 to 64 live in workless households.
This translates into a rise in the proportion of workless households because their wives are unlikely to work either.
Since 1975, the proportion of workless households has risen from 6% to 18%.
The proportion of children in workless households has risen from one in 14 in 1975 to one in five now.
About 1.45 million, or a third, of workless people cited long-term sickness or disability as the main reason behind their inactivity.
Workless households are defined as those which include at least one person of working age (16-64) where no one is in work.
The money will be targeted to help workless families, particularly lone parents.
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Of those, 674 were from "areas where most people were either unemployed or in dead-end jobs" and 500 were from workless households.
The lowest percentage of workless households was in 2006, at the height of the global financial bubble, when the ratio stood at 17.3%.
If fully retired and student households were removed, the number of households in the UK that were workless was 2.92 million, the ONS said.
In addition, just 4% of households that live in homes paid with mortgages were workless, compared with 45% of households living in social housing, he said.
The UK has 5m people on out-of-work benefits and one of the highest rates of workless households in Europe, with 1.9m children living in homes where no-one has a job.
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In addition to rising inequality, Britain's lowly position in the poverty league table is accentuated by its particularly high share of children living in lone parent families and workless households.
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