Employment Characteristics of Tourism Industries, 2011

Key Points

• There are 2.7 million main and second jobs in tourism, 185,000 of these are second jobs;

• 1 million of the of the 2.5 million main jobs in tourism industries are part time;

• There are more than half a million self-employed people in tourism characteristic industries;

• Almost a quarter of a million employee jobs in the tourism industries are temporary;

Introduction

Tourism makes a significant contribution to employment in the UK with 2.7 million people employed in main or second jobs in tourism characteristic industries in 2011, 9.1% of the total for all industries. In this release we describe the composition of tourism employment in terms of employees and self employed, full and part-time working, temporary and second jobs, and the types of occupations held by those working in tourism.

A Profile of Employment in Tourism Industries in the UK

In this section we set out a profile of employment in tourism characteristic industries in the UK. Statistics in this paper are taken from the Annual Population Survey and are broken down into summary tourism industry groups to ensure that the data are based on robust sample sizes. The most often used breakdown contains four summary groups that relate to:

1. accommodation,

2. food and beverage serving activities,

3. passenger transport, vehicle rental and travel agencies and

4. cultural, sports, recreational and exhibition / conference activities.

Tables 1a and 1b present a profile of employment in the tourism characteristic industries and the main points to emerge are as follows:

• There are 2.7 million main and second jobs in tourism;

• 185,000 of these are second jobs;

• 1 million of the of the 2.5 million main jobs in tourism industries are part time;

• More than half of these part time jobs are in the food and beverage serving activities sector;

• There are more than half a million self-employed people in tourism characteristic industries;

• Almost a quarter of a million employee jobs in these industries are temporary;

Table 1a: Characteristics of Employment in Tourism Characteristic Industries, 2011

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Totals may not sum due to rounding. Main job employment includes instances where full or part-time nature of employment is unknown.

Table 1b: Characteristics of Employment in Tourism Characteristic Industries, 2011 (continued)

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Table notes:

1. Totals may not sum due to rounding. Total Employee numbers include instances where permanent or temporary nature of employment is unknown.

In the other sections of this paper we provide more detail about the various employment characteristics of tourism industries and also highlight the profile of occupations of workers within these industries.

Part-time and Second Jobs in Tourism Industries

Figure 1 shows the proportions of different types of part-time employment in main jobs that were within tourism industries in 2011 for the whole of the UK. This highlights that tourism industries employed a large proportion of UK part-time workers who were students or could not find a full-time job. It also shows the importance of tourism in contributing to part-time work in the UK, compared to the contribution to full-time work.

Figure 1: Proportion of part-time and full-time employment in the UK that was within tourism industries, 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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Combining information about full-time and part-time employment in main jobs in different tourism industries data on second jobs gives an indication of the differing extents of these types of employment within tourism industries. The 51% of main jobs that are part-time in the food and drink serving activities equates to over half a million jobs. Forty per cent of all main jobs in tourism industries are part-time in nature representing just over a million jobs. Figure 2 also indicates that there is a higher proportion of second jobs in tourism compared to non-tourism activities with significant percentages across the tourism industry groupings.

Figure 2: Part-time and second job employment by tourism industry 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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Self-Employment in Tourism Industries

In 2011, 12.1 per cent of all UK self-employment was in tourism industries which equates to 536,000 jobs, compared with only 8.6 per cent of UK employees. These total figures mask significant variation across the tourism industry groups, as figure 3 illustrates. Passenger transport and travel and cultural, sport and recreational activities were jointly responsible for almost 9 per cent of UK self-employment (200,000 jobs), but only just over 3 per cent of UK employees.   

Figure 3: Self-employed and employee employment within summary tourism industries, 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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Temporary Employment in Tourism Industries

The headline proportion of main and second employment that tourism industries were responsible for in 2011 was 9.1 per cent. However, these industries were responsible for over 13 per cent of temporary employees in the UK in 2011, a total of 220,000 employees. Figure 4 shows the proportions of the UK totals of different types of temporary employment within tourism industries. It particularly highlights the large proportions of UK seasonal and casual employment in tourism. 

Figure 4: Proportion of temporary employment that is within Tourism Industries 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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In Figure 5 we can see that the cultural, sport and recreation industries and the accommodation industries had the highest proportions of employees in seasonal work in 2011. The former had the highest proportion of employees in total in temporary jobs (16 per cent or 77,000 employees). Just over 10 per cent of employees in accommodation were temporary in 2011, almost 100,000 in total.

Figure 5: Temporary employment by Tourism Industry 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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The length of time workers remain with their employer gives another indication of the temporary nature of employment in tourism industries as shown in Figure 6. In food and beverage serving (18%) and accommodation services (14%), the proportions of workers who have been in their main job for less than 6 months are particularly high, especially in comparison with non-tourism industries (7%).

Figure 6: Length of time with current employer - Main Jobs, 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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Workplace Characteristics

The Annual Population Survey can also provide us with information about a person’s normal place of work and the (self reported) characteristics of that workplace. For example, we can use the survey to determine how many employees there are at a respondent’s workplace and the results of this analysis are shown in Figure 7. The chart shows that workplaces in food and beverage serving activities are particularly characterised by having small numbers of employees, with 72 per cent of all respondents (770,000 in total) being in workplaces with less than 25 employees. Across the other tourism categories there is a similar distribution to that seen in non tourism characteristic industries.

Figure 7: Number of employees in workplaces by tourism industry, 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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The APS also provides information on whether the person’s home is used as a base for their work. The tourism industry group with the highest proportion (10 per cent) of people working at home is the cultural, sports, recreation and conference sub-sector. Well over half of such workers in these industries are in artistic, literary and media occupations. In the accommodation sector 6 per cent of jobs are carried out at the home, mainly by managers and proprietors of hospitality and leisure services (e.g. family run accommodation establishments). These trends can be seen in figure 8.

Figure 8: Home working characteristics of Tourism Industries, 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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Occupations in Tourism Industries

Results from the 2011 Annual Population Survey include a detailed categorisation of the stated occupation of respondents. Combining these responses with industry details gives an indication of which occupations are most prevalent in tourism industries.

Around 50 per cent of main and second job employment within tourism industries in 2011 was in 9 occupations but the remainder was within over 250. Table 2 lists the 30 occupations with the highest tourism industry employment in 2011. There is a mixture of tourism-specific and general occupations in the list and this is reflected by the third column which includes the percentage of employment outside of tourism industries.

Table 2: UK Employment in Tourism Industries by Occupation 2011

Table source: Office for National Statistics

Occupations in the latest Standard Occupational Classification (SOC 2010) can be summarised as one of nine occupation types. The proportions of these differ between tourism and non-tourism industries as figure 9 indicates. Perhaps the most striking feature from figure 11 is the dominance of elementary occupations in tourism and the relatively low proportion of professional occupations. However, there is also a high percentage of managers in tourism as compared to non-tourism industries.

Figure 9: Occupation types in Tourism & Non-tourism Industries 2011

Source: Annual Population Survey (APS) - Office for National Statistics

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Background notes

1. Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available by visiting www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/assessment/code-of-practice/index.html or from the Media Relations Office email: media.relations@ons.gsi.gov.uk