Employment by industry sector
The Lancashire-14 area has larger proportions of its workforce allocated to the big employment sectors of wholesale and retail, manufacturing, education, and human health and social work activities than at the national level. The Lancashire area is therefore under-represented in many of the smaller employment sectors. A number of these smaller sectors cover some of the higher value work opportunities in areas such as finance and insurance, professional, scientific and technical activities.
At the local authority level, manufacturing jobs form a large proportion of total employment in Pendle, Burnley, Hyndburn, Ribble Valley and Rossendale. As would be expected, the education sector is particularly strong in Lancaster and Preston, whilst accommodation and food service activities are very important in Blackpool.
‘Employed’ includes those working at least one hour a week, as a ‘full-time employee’, a ‘part-time employee’, ‘full-time self-employed’ or ‘part-time self-employed’.
Broad industry sectors
A: Agriculture, Forestry and fishing
B: Mining and quarrying
C: Manufacturing
D: Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply
E: Water supply; Sewerage, Waste management and Remediation activities
F: Construction
G: Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles
H: Transport and storage
I: Accommodation and food service activities
J: Information and communication
K: Financial and insurance activities
L: Real estate activities
M: Professional, scientific and technical activities
N: Administrative and support service activities
O: Public administration and defence; compulsory social security
P: Education
Q: Human health and social work activities
R, S, T, U Other
On the day of the census, March 21st 2021, 556,869 residents of the Lancashire-12 area aged sixteen and over and in employment were allocated were allocated to a job in one of the following 19 broad industrial sectors. The largest sector, 'Q: Human health and social work activities' accounted for 92,077 jobs in the Lancashire-12 area. This equated to 16.5% of all jobs in the area (England and Wales = 14.7%). In 2011 the largest sector in Lancashire was 'G: Wholesale and retail trade' and for England and Wales it still is.
How local authorities in Lancashire compare with the national picture
When looking at figures from the 'residence based' table TS060 Lancaster City, like the county of Lancashire, had most workers employed in Sector 'Q'. The 11,611 working in this sector formed 18.6% of the over sixteen population, higher than England and Wales (14.7%) and were ranked in 20th place out of 318 English and Welsh authorities. Although fewer Lancaster residents worked in P: Education (14.1%), this rate was ranked seventh in England and Wales while the 2.4% working in the supply of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning (Sector D) was enough to be ranked top in that sector.
Sector 'G' tended to be dominant in East Lancashire, with the exception of Rossendale where 'Q' was higher by 0.2 percentage points, and also South Ribble and West Lancashire. In other local authorities sector 'Q' was dominant.
Pendle was ranked in 16th place for sector 'G' where the 7,539 employees accounted for 19% of the workforce. Here sector 'Q' was pushed into third place by the manufacturing sector 'C' for which Pendle was ranked fourth in England and Wales with 16.5% of the workforce. More people work in manufacturing in Pendle (6,547) than anywhere else in the Lancashire-12 area. In the detailed sectors table we can see that the industries most represented by Pendle workers were manufacture of furniture, food products, other transport equipment, fabricated metal products, textiles and rubber and plastic products.
Burnley was similar to Pendle and was ranked higher in twelfth place for sector 'G' where the 7,832 employees accounted for 19.6% of the workforce. For manufacturing Burnley was ranked 11th with 14.4%. The industries most represented by Burnley workers were similar to those for Pendle, especially manufacture of food products although with 846 workers 'other manufacturing' was the largest category.
Hyndburn followed the pattern of Pendle and Burnley, being ranked 20th in sector 'G' and 18th in sector 'C'.
There were 12,698 people allocated to sector 'Q' in Preston. This was the highest figure for any sector in any of the Lancashire-14 areas. In England and Wales, Preston was ranked 10th in this sector with 19.1% of the workforce. When broken down into sub-sectors, there were 8,299 workers belonging to 'human health activities' (highest in the Lancashire-14 area), 1,310 under 'residential care activities' (second highest in Lancashire-12 after Lancaster) and 3,089 under 'social work activities'. Around 11 thousand (16.5%) of Preston's working residents were allocated to sector 'G'. This was the only place in the Lancashire-12 area with more than ten thousand. Preston had just over six thousand workers in the manufacturing sector, second highest in the Lancashire-12 area after Pendle. 1,426 of these were in food manufacture and 1,131 in other transport equipment manufacture.
Wyre and South Ribble (both ranked eighth highest in England and Wales) and Fylde (ranked 14th) had just over a tenth of the workforce employed in sector 'O'. This is consistent with the 2011 Census, when Wyre was ranked 11th in England and Wales, South Ribble 13th and Fylde ranked 16th for this sector. An interesting feature of this sector was the high proportion of employees working from home, although in 2021 this may have been an effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Wyre and Fylde these proportions were just under 60%, in South Ribble it was 53.4%.
In the wider Lancashire-14 area Blackpool was ranked second for accommodation and food service activities and fifth for sector 'Q' while Blackburn with Darwen was ranked 24th for manufacturing.
Workplace-based employment in industry sectors
There are some similarities, and some differences, between rankings for residence-based and workplace-based sectors. Lancaster was still ranked first for 'D' and moved up to fifth for Education. Pendle was ranked seventh for manufacturing and Ribble Valley ninth, which differed greatly from the 50th place seen in the residence based equivalent. Burnley, Hyndburn and Pendle had top 30 rankings for sector 'G' although Pendle's ranking was 14 places below it's residence based equivalent. The three districts benefiting from a coastline with beaches, Fylde, Wyre and Lancaster, had top 50 rankings for sector 'I'. Although only 2.3% of the West Lancashire workforce were engaged in sector A 'Agriculture, forestry and fishing', this was enough to achieve the rank of 27 in England and Wales. Having a far larger extent of Grade 1 agricultural land than other rural parts of Lancashire, there is a concentration on fruit, vegetable and salad production, which is more labour-intensive than dairying or arable farming.
Blackpool is only ranked sixth for sector 'I' in the workplace-based analysis, but in 26th place for sector 'O'.
Interactive report
Source: NOMIS: Census 2021: Industry WP015 Workplace population, England and Wales: Census 2021