Business register and employment survey: 2024
A report which presents employee and employment estimates by detailed geography and industry for 2024.
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Introduction
BRES employment estimates are usually published at the UK level. The 2024 provisional BRES employment estimates cover Great Britain only as estimates for 2024 are not yet available for Northern Ireland. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) plan to update the 2024 statistical release with UK estimates when Northern Ireland estimates become available. For 2023, the published revised estimates represent the UK and remain unaffected.
Main points
In 2024 there were 1.291 million employee jobs in Wales, 0.7% lower than the figure of 1.300 million in 2023.
For Great Britain (GB) there was a 0.5% increase in the number of employee jobs between 2023 and 2024.
There were increases in 7 of the 11 GB countries and English regions between 2023 and 2024, with Wales having the largest decrease (0.7%).
The change in Wales between 2023 and 2024 was spread across a number of industry sectors, with the largest absolute increase in the Health sector (up 5,500) followed by the Education sector (up 4,400). The largest fall was in the Business Administration and Support Services sector (down 13,200).
In 2024, the Health sector was the largest industry in Wales, accounting for 17.6% of all employee jobs, followed by 10.3% in the Manufacturing sector, 9.2% in the Education sector and 9.0% in the Retail sector.
In 2024 there were 334,500 public sector employee jobs and 956,700 private sector employee jobs in Wales. The share of these jobs was 25.9% public and 74.1% private (in Great Britain this was 18.8% public and 81.2% private)
Please note that these estimates of public sector employee jobs differ to those of the official public sector employment estimates (ONS). The official estimates should be regarded as the definitive public sector estimates for the English regions and UK countries.
