Business Register and Employment Survey: 2018

Main points

• In 2018 there were 1.273 million employee jobs in Wales, 2.4% higher than the figure of 1.243 million in 2017. For the UK there was a 0.8% increase between 2017 and 2018. 
• There were increases in 10 of the 12 UK countries and English regions between 2017 and 2018, with Wales having the largest percentage increase (up 2.4%). The West Midlands and the North East had the only decreases (down 0.7% and 0.8% respectively). 
• The change in Wales between 2017 and 2018 was spread across a number of industry sectors, with the largest absolute increase in the Health sector (up 14,100) followed by the Construction sector (up 12,000). The largest fall was in the Information & Communication sector (down 26,500).
• In 2018, the Health sector was the largest in Wales, accounting for 16.7% of all employee jobs, followed by 11.3% in the Manufacturing sector, 10.0% in the Retail sector and 9.0% in the Education sector.
• In 2018 there were 299,800 public sector employee jobs and 973,300 private sector employee jobs in Wales. The share of these jobs was 23.5% public and 76.5% private (in the UK this was 17.4% public and 82.6% private). Please note that these estimates of public sector employee jobs differ to those of the official public sector employment estimates. The official estimates should be regarded as the definitive public sector estimates for the English regions and UK countries.