Business Register and Employment Survey: 2020

The most recent data in this report relates to September 2020 which was during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Main points

In 2020 there were 1.259 million employee jobs in Wales, 0.7% lower than the figure of 1.269 million in 2019.

For the UK, there was a 1.9% decrease between 2019 and 2020.

The East of England had the only increase of the 12 UK countries and English regions between 2019 and 2020. Wales had the smallest percentage decrease (down 0.7%).

The change in Wales between 2019 and 2020 was spread across a number of industry sectors, with the largest absolute increase in the Business Administration and Support Services sector (up 8,700) followed by the Construction sector (up 8,200). The largest fall was in the Wholesale sector (down 14,600).

In 2020, the Health sector was the largest industry in Wales, accounting for 15.7% of all employee jobs, followed by 11.0% in the Manufacturing sector, 9.1% in the Retail sector and 9.1% in the Education sector.

In 2020 there were 311,700 public sector employee jobs and 947,500 private sector employee jobs in Wales. The share of these jobs was 24.8% public and 75.2% private (in the UK this was 18.0% public and 82.0% private). Please note that these estimates of public sector employee jobs differ to those of the official public sector employment estimates (Office for National Statistics). The official estimates should be regarded as the definitive public sector estimates for the English regions and UK countries.