Employees in Great Britain by region: 2023

Number of employees in Great Britain, full-time and part-time, by country and English region, including some local authority districts. Provisional results for Great Britain 2023, revised results for UK 2022. Data from the Business Register and Employment Survey.

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Contact:
Email Labour Market team

Release date:
4 November 2024

Next release:
23 October 2025

1. Other pages in this release

Commentary on topics covered in the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) is split between three separate headline bulletins. Other commentary from the latest BRES data can be found on the following pages:

As BRES employment estimates are not yet available for Northern Ireland 2023, these 2023 provisional estimates cover Great Britain only. We plan to update our 2023 release with UK estimates by early 2025. For 2022, the published revised estimates represent the UK and remain unaffected.

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2. Main points

Between 2022 and 2023:

  • of the 11 English regions and countries of Great Britain, 10 saw an increase in the estimated number of employees, with only the East Midlands showing a decrease in employees, down 29,800 or 1.4%

  • the North East saw the largest percentage increase in the estimated number of employees (up 33,100, or 3.1%), followed by the East of England (up 60,100, or 2.1%)

  • of the 363 local authority districts in Great Britain, 237 (65.3%) saw an increased number of employees, whereas 126 (the remaining 34.7%) saw a decrease

  • in the North East, 10 out of 12 local authorities saw an increase in the estimated number of employees, with the largest increases in Newcastle upon Tyne (up 9,300, or 4.9%), County Durham (up 6,500, or 3.7%), and Sunderland (up 4,200, or 3.7%)

  • in the East of England, 38 out of 45 local authorities saw an increase in the estimated number of employees, with the largest increases in Dacorum (up 11,900 or 10.2%), Cambridge (up 5,900 or 5.4%), and South Cambridgeshire (up 5,400 or 6.4%)

  • in the East Midlands, 26 out of 35 local authorities saw a decrease in the estimated number of employees, with the largest decreases in West Northamptonshire (down 8,200 or 3.7%), Leicester (down 5,800 or 3.3%), and South Kesteven (down 4,200 or 7.1%)

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3. Data on employees and employment in Great Britain

Broad Industry Group (Standard Industrial Classification) – Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES): Table 1
Dataset | Released on 4 November 2024
Annual employee and employment estimates for Great Britain and UK split by broad industry group Standard Industrial Classification: SIC 2007. Results given by full-time or part-time and public or private splits.

Industry (two, three and five-digit Standard Industrial Classification) – Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES): Table 2
Dataset | Released on 4 November 2024
Annual employee and employment estimates for Great Britain and UK split by two, three and five-digit Standard Industrial Classification: SIC 2007. Results given by full-time or part-time and public or private splits.

Region - Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES): Table 3
Dataset | Released on 4 November 2024
Annual employee and employment estimates for Great Britain and UK split by region. Results given by full-time or part-time and public or private splits.

Region by broad industry group (Standard Industrial Classification) – Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES): Table 4
Dataset | Released on 4 November 2024
Annual employee and employment estimates for the UK split by region and broad industry group Standard Industrial Classification: SIC 2007. Results given by full-time or part-time and public or private splits.

Local authority county – Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES): Table 5
Dataset | Released on 4 November 2024
Annual employee and employment estimates for the UK split by local authority county. Results given by full-time or part-time and public or private splits.

Local authority district – Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES): Table 6
Dataset | Released on 4 November 2024
Annual employee and employment estimates for the UK split by local authority district. Results given by full-time or part-time and public or private splits.

NOMIS
A service provided by the ONS, to give free access to the most detailed and up-to-date UK labour market statistics from official sources.

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4. Glossary

Employee

An employee is defined as anyone aged 16 years or over who is paid directly from the payroll, in return for carrying out a full-time or part-time job or being on a training scheme.

Employment

Employment includes employees plus the number of working owners who receive drawings or a share of the profits.

Full-time and part-time

Full-time is defined as working more than 30 hours per week and part-time is defined as working 30 hours or less per week.

Legal status

BRES includes breakdowns by public and private sector according to the legal status for national accounts classification purposes.

Standard Industrial Classification

Figures are classified to the Standard Industrial Classification 2007: SIC 2007. In this bulletin, the term "industry" refers to a "Section" as defined in SIC 2007.

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5. Data sources and quality

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in April 2022. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".

Coronavirus

Our Coronavirus and the effects on UK Labour Market statistics article has more information about how labour market sources have been affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. 

View our Comparison of our labour market data sources and the main differences article

Sources

The Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) is a sample survey. For the 2023 survey period, approximately 85,000 businesses were sampled for Great Britain and the response rate was 83.3%. All estimates for 2023 are provisional. Data from the 2022 survey have been subject to small revisions since the provisional estimates were published on 25 October 2023.  

BRES is the primary source for employee estimates at a detailed regional and industrial level. More timely, less detailed, employment estimates are available in Workforce Jobs (WFJ). Workforce jobs benchmarks the private sector employee component to the BRES private sector employee estimates on an annual basis. The WFJ series, which is compiled mainly from surveys of businesses, is the preferred source of statistics when comparing changes in employment over time. The BRES industry data are recommended in preference to industry data from household surveys such as the Annual Population Survey and Labour Force Survey (LFS). 

The public sector employee job figures from BRES aggregated to regional or national level will not match those produced from the Public sector employment release, which is the recommended source for public sector employment figures.

Sampling variability

Because of the survey's large sample size, BRES is able to produce good-quality estimates for detailed breakdowns by industry and geography. The coefficient of variation, a measure of quality, accompanies the BRES datasets on our website. The quality of the estimates may deteriorate for smaller geographies and this should be taken into account when making inferences about the figures.

More quality and methodology information

"Total Employees" rather than "Total Employment" is used when discussing the main points. "Employees" is the more robust of the two measures and is recommended for use in analysis. Further information about BRES can be found in the Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) report.

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7. Cite this statistical bulletin

Office for National Statistics (ONS), published 4 November 2024, ONS website, statistical bulletin, Employees in Great Britain by region: 2023.

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Contact details for this Statistical bulletin

Labour Market team
bres@ons.gov.uk
Telephone: +44 1633 455400