Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) provisional results: 2013

• 70% of all local authority districts have shown an increase in the number of employees between 2012 and 2013, with the number of employees increasing for all regions of the UK over this period
• London has shown the largest increase of all the UK regions between 2012 and 2013, with some of the largest growths in local authority districts occurring in London. This continues the trend seen in recent years
• The professional, scientific & technical sector has shown the largest increase of all broad industry groups between 2012 and 2013, with a particularly large increase for this sector within London
• Between 2009 and 2013, three-quarters of local authority districts saw a decrease in the number of public sector employees, with just over a half showing a fall between 2012 and 2013
• Between 2009 and 2013, two-thirds of local authority districts saw an increase in the number of private sector employees, with slightly less than three-quarters seeing an increase between 2012 and 2013

This statistical bulletin focuses on the strengths of BRES, giving employee estimates by region level and below and by broad industry group and below. There is also a section that focuses on London and a section that looks at public/private estimates of employees. Many of the analyses contained in this bulletin make comparisons with 2009, the year that BRES was introduced.

The Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) is the official source of employee and employment estimates by detailed geography and industry. It is also used to update the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR), the main sampling frame for business surveys used to produce UK official statistics, with information on the structure of businesses in the UK.

The survey collects employment information from businesses across the whole of the UK economy for each site that they operate. This allows ONS to produce workplace based employee and employment estimates by detailed geography and industry, split by full-time/part-time workers and whether the business is in the public or the private sector.

Due to the survey’s large sample size (approximately 80,000 businesses), BRES is able to produce good quality estimates for detailed breakdowns by industry and geography. In fact, no other survey conducted by ONS can produce employment estimates by industry at the detailed levels that BRES can. It is worth noting that BRES does not cover the very small businesses neither registered for VAT nor PAYE, which make up a small part of the economy. Therefore, although the quality of the estimates produced from BRES are very good at less detailed levels such as region, other sources of employment information such as the Annual Population Survey or Workforce Jobs will give a more complete coverage at these levels.

Information on employees and employment are available from BRES. Employment is the number of employees added to the number of working owners (e.g. sole proprietors and partners). The bulletin provides estimates of employees only, as the coverage issues mentioned in the previous paragraph particularly affect the employment measure. Again, Workforce Jobs and the Annual Population Survey give a better coverage of working owners/self-employed workers. The difference between the BRES UK estimate of employment and workforce jobs is approximately 3.3 million.

Figure 1 shows the percentage growth in the number of employees between 2009 and 2013, and between 2012 and 2013 by region. Between 2009 and 2013, the number of employees in the UK has increased by 529,000 (1.9%). Over this time we have seen the number of employees in Scotland, the North East, Yorkshire and The Humber, the South West, and Northern Ireland fall, with most other regions increasing by only a small percentage each. However, the number of employees in London increased by 439,000 (10.6%), with smaller but still comparatively strong growth seen in the neighbouring East and South East. In the last year alone, the number of employees in London grew by 136,000 (3.0%). However, this year has also seen the growth of employees in other regions picking up. This growth outside of London is predominantly being driven by the professional, scientific & technical sector (notably architectural activities, activities of head offices and tax consultancy), the accommodation and food services sector (mainly businesses involved in restaurant and mobile food service activities) and the health sector.

Figure 1: Percentage change in employees by region: 2009 - 2013 and 2012 - 2013

United Kingdom

Source: Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) - Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. Shows the percentage growth in the number of employees between 2009 and 2013, and between 2012 and 2013 by region

Figure 2: Percentage change in employees by broad industry group: 2009 - 2013 and 2012 - 2013

United Kingdom

Source: Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) - Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. Shows the percentage growth in the number of employees between 2009 and 2013, and 2012 and 2013 by broad industry group

Figure 2 shows the percentage growth in the number of employees between 2009 and 2013, and 2012 and 2013 by broad industry group.

Between 2009 and 2013, the largest increase has been in the professional, scientific & technical industry group (12.2%), followed by business administration and support services (10.7%). The industries with the largest increases in this group are temporary employment activities (employment agencies) and head offices. Almost half of the growth in professional, scientific & technical is accounted for by London.

Between 2012 and 2013, the professional, scientific & technical industry group has again showed the largest growth (7.6%). In fact most of the growth in this sector between 2009 and 2013 is as a result of the growth during this final year. The information and communication sector has also shown a relatively large percentage increase between 2012 and 2013 (5.3%). The industries with the largest increases in these groups are management consultancy activities, and computer programming, consultancy and related activities. More than half of the growth in these industries is accounted for by London.

Public administration and construction have seen the largest fall in employees since 2009, although this is mainly as a result of a large fall in 2011 and 2010 respectively.

Figure 3: Top five industries showing the largest growth and fall (thousands) in the number of employees between 2012 and 2013

United Kingdom

Source: Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) - Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. Shows the sectors (2-digit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2007) showing the largest growth and decline in the number of employees between 2012 and 2013

Figure 3 shows the sectors (2-digit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 2007) showing the largest growth and decline in the number of employees between 2012 and 2013. Two of the five industries showing the largest increases include consultancy activities, suggesting that this is a quickly growing area.

Public administration and defence; compulsory social security features in the list of sectors showing the largest falls, an industry that has seen a substantial reduction in the number of employees since 2009.

Figure 4: Employee density map for Great Britain; 2013

Figure 4 gives an overview of how the number of employees is distributed across Great Britain, with the darker colours indicating higher concentration of employees. The map is based on estimates by lower super output area. Although the individual estimates at this level can vary in quality, the map does give a good overall view of the concentration of employees, with the highly concentrated areas generally corresponding to some of the major cities of the UK. Interestingly, much of the UK is quite sparse, with fewer than 20 employees per square kilometre in much of Scotland, Wales and the South West.

Figure 5 shows the 10 local authorities that have shown the largest growth in terms of the number of employees between 2012 and 2013. Six of these local authorities are situated in London, supporting the picture that can be seen in the regional growth tables (figure 1). For the ten local authorities, the industries that are contributing most to this increase are professional, scientific & technical and business administration & support services.

Figure 6 gives a different way of looking at the increase in the number of employees by region. While the overall regional growth seen in figure 1 is susceptible to changes to employees within a particular local authority district, figure 6 looks at the percentage of districts within a region that have shown an increase or a decrease in the number of employees, giving an indication of how well the growth is spread across all districts within the region. For example, we can see that there are four regions that have had a larger percentage of districts that have shown an increase compared with the East of England, whereas in figure 1, only London has a higher percentage increase in the number of employees. This is because, while the districts that have shown an increase in this region far outweigh those that have not, the growth in the East of England is concentrated in fewer districts. Conversely, Yorkshire and The Humber performs better when looking at the data in this way, since the percentage of districts showing an increase is large, even though the overall effect on the growth in the number of employees within this region is not as large as some of the others.

Figure 7: Industrial make-up of local authority district employment

We can further investigate change within local authority districts. The interactive map shows the prevalence of different industry groups within each local authority in Great Britain. Looking at the information in this way shows some interesting patterns about the spatial distribution of industries. Some observations given from the map are:

• The professional, scientific and technical industry group and the information and communication industry group are examples of sectors where activity is spatially concentrated across neighbouring local authority districts. In both these cases, the number of employees is concentrated across a large area of the south of England, particularly London and the South East region

• The finance and insurance sector is an example of a sector that is highly concentrated in small clusters of local authorities. In this case the employment mostly falls within central London

• There are also some industries, for example retail, where the number of employees is not concentrated in particular areas of the country because the industries act to serve local populations and, as a result, tend to be dispersed across the country relatively evenly

Figure 8

The map in figure 8 shows employees per square kilometre in London for 2013. The colours represent the different bandings displayed in the legend, while the height of each bar adds some definition, highlighting the area with the greatest concentration of employees.

Figure 9: Percentage change in employees by broad industry group in London: 2009 - 2013 and 2012 - 2013

Source: Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) - Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. Gives an indication of what sectors are driving growth in London.

London is the UK region that has shown the highest growth every year since 2009. Figure 9 gives an indication of what sectors are driving this growth. In summary:

• The total number of employees working in London has risen from 4.14m in 2009 to 4.58m in 2013, and most industrial sectors have shown growth in London

• Only four sectors fell, specifically motor trades fell by 16.1%, manufacturing and public administration & defence have fallen by about 5%, and transportation & storage has fallen by a very small amount

• The financial & insurance sector, known for being strong in London, has grown 5.5% between 2009 and 2013, which equates to 18,000 employees. However between 2012 and 2013 there has actually been a fall of -5.4%

• The biggest impacts upon employees in London have been the professional, scientific & technical sector, growing by 21.6% (110,000 employees) over the last four years, followed by business administration & support service activities (16.6%), information & communication (19.8%), health (12.3%), and accommodation & food service activities (17.0%). These five sectors account for 77% of the 439,000 growth in numbers of employees in London over the last four years

• In comparison, the rest of the UK has seen a contraction in the number of finance & insurance employees of 7.7%, and while the professional, scientific & technical, business administration & support service activity, and health did all increase, they only increased at about half the rate of London

Figure 10: Percentage of public sector employees by local authority; 2013

Great Britain

Figure 10 shows the number of public sector employees as a percentage of total employees by local authority for 2009 and 2013. This clearly shows that there has been a substantial decrease in the proportion of public sector jobs for many local authorities. This is due to a combination of a decrease in the number of public sector employees over this period, along with an increase in the number of private sector employees.

Figure 11: Percentage change in employees by region for the public sector: 2009 – 2013 and 2012 – 2013

United Kingdom

Source: Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) - Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. Shows the change in public sector employees between 2009 - 2013 and 2012 - 2013 as a percentage by local authority

• Apart from Wales, all regions have shown a fall in the number of public sector employees between 2009 and 2013. The regions in the North of England (the North East, the North West and Yorkshire and The Humber) and the South West region have shown the largest percentage falls over this period. Between 2012 and 2013, six regions have continued to show a fall in the number of public sector workers, but the remaining six regions have shown an increase

• Between 2009 and 2013, three quarters of local authority districts saw a decrease in the number of public sector employees, although this reduced to just over a half when comparing 2012 with 2013

Figure 12: Percentage change in employees by region for the private sector: 2009 – 2013 & 2012 – 2013

United Kingdom

Source: Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) - Office for National Statistics

Notes:

1. Shows the change in private sector employees between 2009 - 2013 and 2012 - 2013 as a percentage by local authority

• Between 2009 and 2013, All UK regions have shown an increase in the number of private sector employees with the exception of the South West, which remained static and Scotland, which saw a decrease in the number of private sector employees of 0.6%

• Between 2009 and 2013, London and the South East have shown by far the biggest increase in the number of private sector employees at 449,000 (13.3%) and 138,000 (4.5%) respectively

• Other regions’ private sector employees picked up between 2012 and 2013, notably the North West and the South West, which had an increase of 58,000 (2.5%) and 42,000 (2.3%) respectively

• Between 2009 and 2013, two thirds of local authority districts saw an increase in the number of private sector employees, with slightly less than three quarters seeing an increase between 2012 and 2013