Employment and Economic Activity - April 2014

Published: June 2014

• Economic Factsheet: Employment and Economic Activity - April 2014
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The Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) is a rich dataset from which small area analyses can be derived at various levels.  The survey collects employment information from businesses across the whole of the UK economy for each site that they operate.

• Employment is the number of people in employment. It consists of people aged 16 and over who did paid work (as an employee or self-employed working proprietors). The BRES figure for ‘total employment’ is often used to show the number of jobs in an area.
• An employee is anyone aged 16 years or over that an organisation directly pays from its payroll, in return for carrying out a full/part-time job or being on a training scheme.  (Excludes: voluntary workers, self-employed, working owners who are not paid via PAYE).

Total Employment (2012)

Source: BRES 2012. NB. All figures are rounded to the nearest 100.

Total employment (jobs) in Somerset decreased by 3.8% between 2011 and 2012, compared to a marginal increase of 0.5% at national level. The majority of the County’s jobs (30%) are located in South Somerset (64,200), whilst only 5.6% are to be found in West Somerset (12,000). 

Somerset’s largest sector in employment terms is health (15.2%), followed by manufacturing (14.5%).  The smallest sectors are agriculture, forestry and fishing (0.3%), and finance and insurance (1.4%).

The agriculture, Forestry and fishing sector had the largest annual increase between 2011 and 2012 (12%). whereas employment in business administration and support services fell by 29% over the same period.

The number of employees in Somerset fell by 5.3% between 2009 and 2012.  The number of Somerset full-time employees has fallen by 4,000 between 2011 and 2012 while the number of part-time employees increased by 2,000 over the same period. This may be an indication of under-employment; people working part-time because there is insufficient full-time work available.

Economic Activity (December 2013)

80.2% of Somerset’s residents aged 16-64 are economically active, compared to 77.3% nationally.  Within the County, Sedgemoor has the highest economic activity rate (85%) showing a substantial annual increase of 11.8%. Mendip, Taunton Deane and West Somerset have all seen decreases in economic activity Males have a consistently higher economic activity rate than females across Somerset, the LEP and the UK.Source: Annual Population Survey, NOMIS 2014

Employment Rate (December 2013)

Source: Annual Population Survey, NOMIS 2014

Somerset’s employment rate is higher than nationally and has risen by 1.9% in the last year. Taunton Deane has the highest employment rate of all the districts, although this has decreased by 3.6% since December 2012. Sedgemoor has seen the greatest improvement over this period (+9.4%).