Age, national statistics socio-economic classification (ns-sec) and sex
As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using Labour Market data for planning purposes.
Read more about this quality notice.
Estimates for single year of age between ages 90 and 100+ are less reliable than other ages. Estimation and adjustment at these ages was based on the age range 90+ rather than five-year age bands.
Read more about this quality notice.
Summary
This dataset provides 2021 Census estimates that classify all usual residents in England and Wales by age, national statistics socio-economic classification (ns-sec) and sex. The estimates are as at census day, 21 March 2021.
Variable and dataset information
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower layer Super Output Areas
Lower layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) are made up of groups of Output Areas (OAs), usually four or five. They comprise between 400 and 1,200 households and have a usually resident population between 1,000 and 3,000 persons.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
- country - for example, Wales
- region - for example, London
- local authority - for example, Cornwall
- health area – for example, Clinical Commissioning Group
- statistical area - for example, MSOA or LSOA
Age
A person’s age on Census Day, 21 March 2021 in England and Wales. Infants aged under 1 year are classified as 0 years of age.
National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SeC)
The National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC) indicates a person's socio-economic position based on their occupation and other job characteristics.
It is an Office for National Statistics standard classification. NS-SEC categories are assigned based on a person's occupation, whether employed, self-employed, or supervising other employees.
Full-time students are recorded in the "full-time students" category regardless of whether they are economically active.
Sex
This is the sex recorded by the person completing the census. The options were “Female” and “Male”.
Protecting personal data will prevent 49 areas from being published.
How to improve your results
Try one or more of the following steps.
- Select a larger area type.
- Select fewer categories in Age, National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SeC) or Sex.
- Remove variables from this dataset.
Variables
Get the data
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Contact us
Protecting personal data
Sometimes we need to make changes to data if it is possible to identify individuals. This is known as statistical disclosure control.
In Census 2021, we:
- swapped records (targeted record swapping), for example, if a household was likely to be identified in datasets because it has unusual characteristics, we swapped the record with a similar one from a nearby small area (very unusual households could be swapped with one in a nearby local authority)
- added small changes to some counts (cell key perturbation), for example, we might change a count of four to a three or a five – this might make small differences between tables depending on how the data are broken down when we applied perturbation
Read more in Section 5 of our article Design for Census 2021.
Version history
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| Version superseded | |
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Dataset link
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