National Statistics Socio-economic Classifications
On the day of the census, March 21st 2021, just over million residents of the Lancashire-12 area aged sixteen and over were classified to nine broad groups. The percentages in each class were fairly close between Lancashire-12 and England and Wales, with differences of 0.6 percentage points or less in seven of the groups. Only in the first group, 'Higher managerial, administrative and professional occupations (L1, L2 & L3)', England and Wales (13.1%) exceeded Lancashire-12 (11.1%) by two percentage points and in the seventh group, 'Routine occupations (L13)' England and Wales (12.1%) was lower than Lancashire-12 (12.9%) by 0.8 percentage points. There was a much wider variation amongst Lancashire's districts. The second group 'Lower managerial, administrative and professional occupations (L4, L5 & L6)' had the highest percentage for all areas shown except in Burnley (16.4%) where L13 (17.5%) was highest. In Pendle the percentages for these same two groups was identical, but there were eight more people in the L4, L5 & L6 group. A high of 24.7% for L4, L5 & L6 was recorded in Ribble Valley.
Notes relating to the table (TS062) warn that the 2021 table is not comparable with the 2011 table. This variable is now derived from the occupation variable. Changes in the SOC between 2011 and 2021 mean this data is not directly comparable, even at the highest levels of the classification, and as such no 2011 Census data was included in the topic summary; KS611EW gives data for age 16-74 only and therefore is not the same population base as 2021 data. As there is no classification for the retired population it seems the classification can actually be based on former occupations. Therefore this table should not be used as a guide to economic activity.
In order to provide figures that are more in line with the 2011 table we have used the ONS custom dataset builder to add age band indicators to the classifications. There are a variety of age band combinations available and we have used one that includes the 75 years and over band, which can be unselected. These figures are displayed on the second slide of the Microsoft Power BI interactive report. With residents aged 75 and over excluded the results are not very different from those in TS062, but can be seen as a better guide to economic activity.
Interactive report
Source: NOMIS: Census 2021: NSSeC ONS custom dataset builder