Employment loss by sector 1979 to 2022

Ref: FOI/2022/4535

You asked​

If we were to do the statistics from Thatcher to Johnson: what is the true scale of employment loss in each sector? From education to health and social care, construction to manufacturing?

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We have looked into our workforce jobs dataset as a means to calculate the figures required, accessible via the following link: JOBS02: Workforce jobs by industry - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). We have used the seasonally adjusted set of figures as this goes back continuously through the period required.  

For clarity, the period between the two Prime Ministers is May 1979 to September 2022 and we have calculated between the dates of June 1979 to June 2022. The former, because it is the closest to the beginning of Mrs Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister and the latter because it is the latest data we have available.

You can see that the total number of workforce jobs has increased by just over 8.4million jobs since June 1979. There are differences between industry sectors with some below their 1979 level, manufacturing displaying the largest fall at nearly 4.1 million; while human health and social work has increased by 2.6 million. Although the majority of industries have increased job numbers. Please see the associated download named 'JOBS02 Workforce jobs by industry (seasonally adjusted)' to compare all industry sectors.