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.