https://nordicmodelnow.org/2026/02/01/its-official-the-dwp-pimps-women-on-onlyfans/
FOI requests to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have revealed that the DWP, along with the tax office (HMRC), considers self-employment as an OnlyFans ‘creator’ to be regular self-employment, not significantly different from being a plumber or hairdresser for example.
Under DWP rules, jobseekers and Universal Credit claimants who are self-employed are given an amount that they are expected to achieve through their self-employment each month. This is called their minimum income floor (MIF) and these claimants “must take active steps to achieve their MIF”. Work coaches assess whether claimants are taking “appropriate steps” to achieve their MIF and if not, they may put pressure on claimants to do so, with the potential threat of sanctions, including a reduction in the amount of benefit they receive. While some women make a lot of money on OnlyFans, the vast majority make very little, with average monthly earnings being about £130. The main way that a woman can increase her OnlyFans income is by creating more explicit and degrading content and promoting this by posting clips of it on mainstream social media sites, including TikTok, Instagram and similar, where children are likely to be present.
The DWP does not consider that treating OnlyFans as regular self-employment in this way breaches Section 2A of the Employment and Training Act 1973 (ETA), which bans the DWP making “arrangements in respect of employment for sexual purposes”. Furthermore, the DWP has no plans to extend the scope of the ETA to cover self-employment on OnlyFans and similar. This means that the DWP is complicit in the commercial sexual exploitation of (mainly) young women and in increasing the amount of pornographic material that children are likely to be exposed to. This also suggests that Dame Diana Johnson, Minister for Employment, misled Parliament in her response to questions from Rosie Duffield on 8 December 2025. There’s more on this below.
FOI requests to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have revealed that the DWP, along with the tax office (HMRC), considers self-employment as an OnlyFans ‘creator’ to be regular self-employment, not significantly different from being a plumber or hairdresser for example.
Under DWP rules, jobseekers and Universal Credit claimants who are self-employed are given an amount that they are expected to achieve through their self-employment each month. This is called their minimum income floor (MIF) and these claimants “must take active steps to achieve their MIF”. Work coaches assess whether claimants are taking “appropriate steps” to achieve their MIF and if not, they may put pressure on claimants to do so, with the potential threat of sanctions, including a reduction in the amount of benefit they receive. While some women make a lot of money on OnlyFans, the vast majority make very little, with average monthly earnings being about £130. The main way that a woman can increase her OnlyFans income is by creating more explicit and degrading content and promoting this by posting clips of it on mainstream social media sites, including TikTok, Instagram and similar, where children are likely to be present.
The DWP does not consider that treating OnlyFans as regular self-employment in this way breaches Section 2A of the Employment and Training Act 1973 (ETA), which bans the DWP making “arrangements in respect of employment for sexual purposes”. Furthermore, the DWP has no plans to extend the scope of the ETA to cover self-employment on OnlyFans and similar. This means that the DWP is complicit in the commercial sexual exploitation of (mainly) young women and in increasing the amount of pornographic material that children are likely to be exposed to. This also suggests that Dame Diana Johnson, Minister for Employment, misled Parliament in her response to questions from Rosie Duffield on 8 December 2025. There’s more on this below.