Veterans by occupation
Take care when comparing characteristics of UK armed forces veterans and non-veterans, as veterans are mainly male and older. Not adjusting for this fact can lead to misinterpretation, as variables such as health strongly relate to age and sex.
Read more about this quality notice.
As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using Labour Market data for planning purposes. We have incorrectly coded two occupation classifications “5221 Metal forming, welding and related trades” and “5222 Tool makers, tool fitters and markers out” to “521 Metal forming, welding and related trades”. These should be coded to “522 Tool makers, tool fitters and markers-out”. Take care when using this variable. We will correct this by July 2023.
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 who have previously served in the UK armed forces by their 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
UK armed forces veteran indicator
Identifies people who have previously served in the UK armed forces. This includes those who have served for at least one day in armed forces, either regular or reserves, or Merchant Mariners who have seen duty on legally defined military operations.
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
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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
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