Cannock Ward population and employment figures 1981 to 2021

FOI REF: FOI-2023-1477

You asked

Please can I request employment figures by sector and population figures for Cannock South. I am interested in Census figures from 1981 onwards.

We said

Thank you for your freedom of information request. 

In the 10 years between each Census everything changes, particularly in the last 50 years, due to emerging technologies. The questions asked change to reflect the needs of society at the time, the outputs produced and the format in which they are available evolve and, often geographical units change.

Although the broad picture of population change can be followed from census to census, but each census has evolved to reflect and keep up with changes in society therefore, direct comparison does not necessarily provide a good source of information about detailed change over time.  

The associated download 'Cannock_South_Ward_population_by_age_1981-2023.xls' shows the population and occupation for Cannock South ward from 1981-2021. However, the data is not presented consistently across the five censuses, but the broad categories remain the same. The 1981 and 1991 questions were divided into easy to code and difficult to code (write-in answers). This determined whether the question was fully processed (100%) or whether it was processed for only 10% of households. Occupation was one of the difficult to code questions (10% sample). 

Annual population statistics are available for the years between the censuses in the form of mid-year estimates: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/wardlevelmidyearpopulationestimatesexperimental 

Feel free to contact Census.customerservices@ons.gov.uk should you need further guidance.