Business Register and Employment Survey: 2023

BRES employment estimates are usually published at the UK level. The 2023 provisional BRES employment estimates cover Great Britain only as estimates for 2023 are not yet available for Northern Ireland. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) plan to update the 2023 statistical release with UK estimates by early 2025. For 2022, the published revised estimates represent the UK and remain unaffected.

• In 2023 there were 1.300 million employee jobs in Wales, 1.8% higher than the figure of 1.277 million in 2022.
• For Great Britain (GB) there was a 1.4% increase in the number of employee jobs between 2022 and 2023.
• There were increases in 10 of the 11 GB countries and English regions between 2022 and 2023, with Wales having the fourth largest increase (1.8%). 
• The change in Wales between 2022 and 2023 was spread across a number of industry sectors, with the largest absolute increase in the Health sector (up 25,400) followed by the Business Administration and Support Services sector (up 8,400). The largest fall was in the Transport & Storage (including Postal) sector (down 11,900).
• In 2023, the Health sector was the largest industry in Wales, accounting for 17.1% of all employee jobs, followed by 10.7% in the Manufacturing sector, 8.8% in the Retail sector and 8.8% in the Education sector.
• In 2023 there were 330,000 public sector employee jobs and 969,800 private sector employee jobs in Wales. The share of these jobs was 25.4% public and 74.6% private (in Great Britain this was 18.4% public and 81.6% 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.

Statistician: Joe Davies
Email: labourmarket.stats@gov.wales

Media: 0300 025 8099