FOI reference: FOI-2024-2019
You asked
I was curious whether the Office for National Statistics has information regarding the percentage of women working in jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), specifically physics within the last 10 years. I would also like to know about the current percentage of female graduates in STEM and physics from the last 10 years.
We said
Thank you for your request.
We collect information on the occupations that people work in as part of the Annual Population Survey, a household survey based on interviews with people resident in the UK. Information on the type of work someone does is coded in line with the Standard Occupational Classification 2020 (SOC2020).
There is no official definition of which occupations might be classified as STEM jobs or physics jobs since many occupations will make some use of science-based knowledge and skills to a greater or lesser degree.
However, we do publish a full breakdown of the numbers of men and women in different occupations in the latest 12-month period on our Nomis website. Since there is no official definition, it would be up to an individual user to consider which occupations met the requirements of being STEM jobs for their purposes.
We do not produce or publish numbers relating to the degree subjects of graduates. The Department for Education may be able to better help you with this query, because they hold more detailed sources relating to universities and graduates. They produce analysis such as Graduate outcomes for all subjects by university and Higher education graduate employment and earnings, which may be helpful to you.