Occupation - minor groups

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 aged 16 years and over in employment the week before the census in England and Wales 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

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)
105 Categories
  • 111 Chief executives and senior officials
  • 112 Production managers and directors
  • 113 Functional managers and directors
  • 356 Public services associate professionals
  • 357 HR, training and other vocational associate guidance professionals
  • 358 Regulatory associate professionals
  • 925 Elementary storage occupations
  • 926 Other elementary services occupations
  • Does not apply
Show all 105 categories

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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
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Original release

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