Distance travelled to work by occupation

Important information:

As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using Travel to Work data for planning purposes.

Read more about this quality notice.

Important information:

We advised users that two occupation categories “5221 Metal forming, welding and related trades” and “5222 Tool makers, tool fitters and markers out” were incorrectly coded to “521 Metal forming, welding and related trades”. These should have been coded to “522 Tool makers, tool fitters and markers-out”. We also advised users that two occupation categories “2211 Generalist medical practitioners” and “2212 Specialist medical practitioners” were incorrectly coded to “21 Science, research, engineering and technology professionals”. These should have been coded to “22 Health professionals”. These were corrected on 27 July 2023. As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using Labour Market data for planning purposes.

Read more about this quality notice.

Summary

This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in England and Wales by distance travelled to work and by occupation. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.

Variable and dataset information

Area type

Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.

For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.

Lower tier local authorities

Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.

Coverage

Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:

  • country - for example, Wales
  • region - for example, London
  • local authority - for example, Cornwall
  • health area – for example, Clinical Commissioning Group
  • statistical area - for example, MSOA or LSOA

Distance travelled to work

The distance, in kilometres, between a person's residential postcode and their workplace postcode measured in a straight line. A distance travelled of 0.1km indicates that the workplace postcode is the same as the residential postcode. Distances over 1200km are treated as invalid, and an imputed or estimated value is added.

“Work mainly at or from home” is made up of those that ticked either the "Mainly work at or from home" box for the address of workplace question, or the “Work mainly at or from home” box for the method of travel to work question.

Distance is calculated as the straight line distance between the enumeration postcode and the workplace postcode.

Combine this variable with “Economic activity status” to identify those in employment at the time of the census.

Occupation (current)

Classifies what people aged 16 years and over do as their main job. Their job title or details of activities they do in their job and any supervisory or management responsibilities form this classification. This information is used to code responses to an occupation using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020.

It classifies people who were in employment between 15 March and 21 March 2021, by the SOC code that represents their current occupation.

The lowest level of detail available is the four-digit SOC code which includes all codes in three, two and one digit SOC code levels.

Variables

Population type
All usual residents
Area type
Lower tier local authorities
Coverage
England and Wales
Occupation (current)
10 Categories
  • 1. Managers, directors and senior officials
  • 2. Professional occupations
  • 3. Associate professional and technical occupations
  • 4. Administrative and secretarial occupations
  • 5. Skilled trades occupations
  • 6. Caring, leisure and other service occupations
  • 8. Process, plant and machine operatives
  • 9. Elementary occupations
  • Does not apply
Show all 10 categories
Distance travelled to work
5 Categories
  • Less than 10km
  • 10km to less than 30km
  • 30km and over
  • Works mainly from home
  • Not in employment or works mainly offshore, in no fixed place or outside the UK

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Protecting personal data

Sometimes we need to make changes to data if it is possible to identify individuals. This is known as statistical disclosure control.

In Census 2021, we:

  • swapped records (targeted record swapping), for example, if a household was likely to be identified in datasets because it has unusual characteristics, we swapped the record with a similar one from a nearby small area (very unusual households could be swapped with one in a nearby local authority)
  • added small changes to some counts (cell key perturbation), for example, we might change a count of four to a three or a five – this might make small differences between tables depending on how the data are broken down when we applied perturbation

Read more in Section 5 of our article Design for Census 2021.

Version history

Release date Reason for update
Version superseded
Version superseded
Original release

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