Employment

Employment by Industry

Workplace employment estimates are available via the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES), an annual business survey undertaken by ONS which collects employment information.  BRES data is currently available for the years 2009 to 2022.

The Swansea economy has a proportionately large share of jobs in the public administration, health, education, financial services and retail sectors.  Of the 110,000 people in employment within Swansea (2022), an estimated 89.1% (98,000) are employed in the service sectors (SICs G-U in the table below), with 29.5% (32,400) working within the public sector.  In Wales, the proportion employed by the service sectors is lower, at 80.1%, with 23.9% in the public sector.  The manufacturing and construction sectors employ approximately 10,000 in total; with both sectors' share of employment in Swansea below the averages for Wales and Great Britain.

Table 3: Workplace-based employment (Word doc) [26KB] 

Employment by Occupation

Analysis of employment by occupation using the latest resident-based estimates from the Annual Population Survey tends to reflect Swansea's role as a regional service centre, with higher proportions (than Wales) employed in occupations associated with the service sector, including professional, administrative/secretarial and caring/leisure/other services.  The equivalent Swansea workplace data shows variation with residence-based figures in some categories but a broadly similar overall pattern.

Table 4: Employment by occupation (Word doc) [26KB]

Unemployment

Unemployment figures (both administrative count and survey-based) are widely used indicators of local labour market performance.  The June 2024 Claimant Count - all Jobseekers' Allowance (JSA) claimants, plus claimants of Universal Credit (UC) who are required to seek work - and the model-based unemployment estimates (for the survey year period ending March 2024), together with recent change, are shown in Table 5.

Table 5: Unemployment (Word doc) [25KB]

Within Swansea, the ward Claimant Count figures (Jun-24) show that a number of local areas experience rates significantly above the Swansea average (3.5%); in particular Townhill (7.2%), Castle (6.5%), Penderry (6.3%) and Landore (5.5%).  The lowest rate is Mayals (0.2%).

This web page also contains tables and graphs showing claimant unemployment trends during the last two and 24 years for Swansea, Wales and the UK; plus local and national trends in the wider survey-based measure of unemployment (including the model-based estimates for Swansea).