Annual Population Survey self-employment estimates for hairdressers and beauticians, UK: 2010 to 2020

Dyddiad y datganiad:
11 September 2026

FOI reference: FOI-2026-3707

You asked

Thank you for your response of 17 August 2026 confirming Annual Population Survey (APS) self-employment estimates for Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 6221 (Hairdressers and barbers) and SOC 6222 (Beauticians and related occupations) for the period April 2025 to March 2026.

To build a consistent historical time series for comparison against third-party sector analysis that uses these same occupation codes, I would be grateful if you could provide the following:

  1. APS estimates of the number of people in employment, split by employee and self-employed status, for SOC code 1253 (Hairdressing and beauty salon managers and proprietors), for each available 12-month period from January to December 2015 (or the earliest available comparable period) through to the latest published period.
  2. The same breakdown (employee vs self-employed) for SOC codes 6221 and 6222, individually, for the same date range, to enable direct year-on-year comparison rather than a single most-recent period.
  3. Where SOC 2010 and SOC 2020 classifications differ over this period, please provide data on both bases for any period where a direct comparison is available, as previously noted in your response regarding the SOC 2010/2020 transition.
  4. Please confirm whether these three occupation codes (1253, 6221, 6222) are the basis, or a comparable basis, for any employment estimates ONS has supplied – whether via bespoke analysis, ad hoc release or Freedom of Information (FOI) response – to any organisation researching or reporting on the hairdressing and beauty sector since January 2024, and if so, please provide details of that release (redacting personal but not organisational data, as before).
  5. Please also confirm whether ONS's published FOI disclosure log records this and any related prior requests concerning SOC 1253/6221/6222 or the hairdressing and beauty sector, and if so, provide a link to the relevant published entries.

I understand this may be more efficiently supplied as a Nomis dataset reference or bulk download link rather than as tabulated data in the response itself, if that data is available in that form.

We said

Thank you for your query relating to hairdressers, barbers, beauticians and related occupations. 

The data you have requested from the Annual Population Survey (APS) for Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes 1253, 6221 and 6222 are available from our Nomis website. The occupation (SOC2010) by sex by employment type dataset and occupation (SOC2020) by sex by employment type dataset allow you to tailor your query to extract information for employees and self-employed, for specific occupations, or across a range of occupations and across the time series of each of those datasets.

The SOC 2010 dataset will allow you to access data from the 12-month period April 2005 to March 2006, up to and including January to December 2021. The SOC 2020 dataset contains data from January to December 2021 onwards, with that one period providing an overlap between the two datasets. 

There have been a number of ad-hoc analyses published by us since January 2024. However, these have tended to focus on analysis of the hairdressing industry, as defined by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 96.02 – Hairdressing and other beauty treatment. This industry includes hairdressing, along with shaving and beard trimming, along with facial massage, manicure and pedicure, make-up, and other beauty treatment activities. 

An industry-based analysis would not be directly comparable with an occupation-based analysis, due to the differences in coverage from these two approaches. Not everyone in the identified occupations will work within this industry, and conversely not everyone working in SIC 96.02 will be classified to one of the requested SOC occupation codes. 

We have no record of any specific ad hoc requests or FOI responses since January 2024 requesting information for the identified occupation codes. However, the relevant APS occupation-based data are available to all users through Nomis, so the information could be extracted directly from those published datasets.

In addition, employment data for detailed industry codes, including SIC 96.02 – Hairdressing and other beauty treatment – are also available through Nomis from the Business Register and Employment Survey. It is therefore possible that users may have extracted employment data for this industry during that period, but we would not hold a record of all such user-generated extracts. 

Industry-based analysis referencing hairdressing and beauty treatment since January 2024 includes: 

There have been a number of FOI requests and ad-hoc analysis relating to the indicated occupations prior to January 2024, including: 

There have also been a number of earlier requests regarding the hairdressing and beauty industry: 

We hope this is helpful in directing you to the relevant published data and related ONS releases.

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