The ONS has created an interactive tool that shows how many people listed an occupation in the 2021 Census.
The tool shows how many women and men are in an occupation and how many people in each age group work in a particular occupation. The tool also shows the percentage of full-time or part-time workers for roles and sectors as well as disability status.
You can use the interactive tool here to find out more.
Key Findings
The 2021 Census tells us that 1,114,355 people were sales and retail assistants in March 2021. For both the 16- 24 year old age group and the 25 to 34 year old age group, the most popular occupation was Sales and retail assistants.
Care workers and home carers was the second most common occupation reported on the census with 856,215 people in this occupation in March 2021.
The data from the Census shows that Young people are more dependent on retail and hospitality jobs. Young people aged 16-24 made up 10% of the total workforce but they made up around half of the workers in some hospitality roles. Bar staff had a younger age profile compared with the whole working population with 48% being aged 16-24 years old.
The data from the Census also noted that some occupations were dying out whilst some were growing and possibly replacing some professions. “Typists and other keyboard professions” appeared to be a dying profession, with 60% of people doing this job aged 50 years or older. In comparison, data entry jobs, which also require routine keyboard work, were mostly held by younger people, with 41% aged under 35 years. This is relatively high compared with 33% of people in that age group across the whole workforce. Only 18% of typists were aged under 35 years.
Three-quarters of people working in “science, research, engineering and technology” occupations were men (76%). Almost half of female engineers were aged under 35 years (48%). For men who were working as engineers, around a third were aged under 35 years, similar to the whole working population.
