Why It Matters Industry
Summary
We have captured the domain (also known as the ‘field of work’) in which working residents in a given postcode are employed. The following datasets focus specifically on residents working in agriculture, industry, infrastructure and construction, and the retail/restaurant domains.
Interpretation
| Dataset | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Total Number of Employed Usual Residents in the Postcode | This tells you the estimated number of usual residents in your selected postcode who are also employed, regardless of the specific field of work they belong to. |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to: Crop and/or animal production and hunting, Forestry and logging, and/or Fishing and aquaculture |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Mining and Quarrying | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to: Mining of coal and lignite, Extraction of crude petroleum and natural gas, Mining of metal ores and/or aggregates, and/or Mining support service activities |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Manufacturing | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to, but not limited to: the manufacture of goods such as food/beverage products, textiles/apparel, or plastic products, the printing and reproduction of recorded media, or the manufacture/repair of machinery, electronic products, vehicles and/or furniture. |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Electricity, Gas, Steam and/or Air Conditioning Supply | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply. |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Water Supply, Sewage waste Management and Remediation | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to: Water collection, treatment and supply, Waste collection, treatment and disposal, materials recovery, and/or Sewerage |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Construction | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to: the construction of buildings, or civil engineering |
| Percentage of Residents Working in the Wholesale and Retail Trades, and the Sale and Repair of Motor Vehicles and Motor Cycles | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to wholesale and retail trade and/or the sale and repair of motor vehicles and cycles |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Transport and Storage | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to: Land-surface and subterranean transport, Water/air transport, Warehousing and support activities for transportation, and/or Postal and courier activities |
| Percentage of Residents Working in Accommodations and Food Services | This tells you the percentage of all the people in your neighbourhood that work in jobs concerned with or connected to: accommodation provision and/or food and beverage service activities |
Definition
We have estimated the percentage breakdown of people within your neighbourhood according to the industry they work in. Industry classifications are determined according to which industry it can be said that most economic value is added to. The industries themselves are taken from Eurostat’s commonly recognised industrial divisions.
Why the metric matters from a commercial inhabitant’s perspective
Commercial inhabitants will be interested to know that the industries that employ residents in an area, are quite reliable indicators as to the type of infrastructure and ancillary services locally available to support business. For example, if most inhabitants in an area work in manufacturing, one would legitimately expect supporting infrastructure- such as business parks, tool and repair services, transport corridors, storage and distribution facilities, waste and refuse services, and light industrial units to all be proximate to the area. Furthermore, industry demographic data mixed with occupation data, can then be used to deem which occupations are being over or under rewarded by virtue of the industry in which they work.
Why the metric matters from a residential inhabitant’s perspective
The mixture of industries that residents of London neighbourhood are employed by is of interest to residential inhabitants for two main reasons. Firstly, where one industry dominates an area, irrespective of the range of occupations that the industry employs, there is a good body of evidence to suggest that such an area is likely to have developed into an “industry enclave” whereby economic production, life amenities, ecological preferences, local culture are all likely to be somehow affected by the dominant industry. If we look at Hounslow, for example, the Transport and Storage industry dominates such that the local economy is geared towards serving the Transport and Storage industry.
The amenities that residents have access to, zonally restricted to areas that won’t interfere with the operation of the dominant industry and ecological preferences, have been expressed to favour, prioritise and serve Transport and Storage, all of which creates a unique local culture as compared to other non-industry dominated areas. It is also possible to gain an insight into local politics if we understand which industry the inhabitants of a LES neighbourhood work in - for example, if a large proportion of a neighbourhood works in logistics, this will indicate that at least one large logistics firm is present in a locale and may therefore indicate that certain powerful heads of industry might exert a lot of control over local issues.
General commentary
Financial services, particularly banking, insurance and other financial intermediation activities such as security broking and fund management, is the most dominant industry in London. Apart from traditional banking activities and insurance, London also thrives as a centre for foreign exchange and bond trading. The foreign exchange market has a daily global turnover of about 2.5 trillion GBP and London accounts for about 36.5 percent of this, hence London is home to many brokers and clearing houses. There were approximately 350,000 workforce jobs in the financial services sector in London in 2015.
The media activities industry is also dominant in London, an employment sector that lies within the ‘Other Services sector of the economy. Also in ‘Other Services’ are jobs in leisure and recreation, and it is the growth in these sectors that has made ‘Other Services’ one of the fastest growing employment sectors of the London economy and a creator of 400,000 jobs. The ‘Hotels and Restaurants’ sector in London is one of its biggest employers which has grown rapidly in the last twenty years and now provides around 350,000 jobs.
Unfortunately, the manufacturing industry continues to decline - 75 percent since the 1960s which in real terms means a loss of approximately 1.25 million jobs in this industry. Today only 2.8 percent of Londoners work in the manufacturing industry and of the approximately 200,000 jobs left in this sector a notable proportion are in publishing.
The other significant industries in London are retail, which provides around 400,000 workforce jobs or ten percent of all employment in the capital. Transport and communications also account for 340,000 workforce jobs; wholesaling for 233,000 workforce jobs; and construction for 222,000.
London additionally has 950,000 workforce jobs in the largely public sector areas of health, education and public administration. In a paper that was published in 2013, the London Assembly Economy Committee said that the slowdown in London’s construction limited the output of the sector and arrested employment growth in it. They went on to state that it was small and medium-sized construction companies which had been the hardest hit, and the authority was looking at ways of improving the situation.
The Maynard’s Factory in Harringay (Photograph: Wikimedia Commons)
Trivia
The most recent Business Register and Employment Survey (2017), shows that 483,000 people are employed in the City of London. This represents 9% of Greater London’s employment, and 1.6% of the GB’s total employment, meaning that over 1 in 63 of the GB’s workforce are employed in the City.
History
Records from the period following the Great Fire of London indicated that a large proportion of Londoners were merchants and traders who sold their wares in the City, East End and West End. In addition, weaving and dyeing, spinning and cloth finishing were common jobs. Another large employer of Londoners was the retail of foodstuffs. London’s stratified class system was very evident from the fact that the largest single occupational group was servants and after this, miscellaneous manual jobs such as of porters, street vendors and washerwomen.
The numbers of medical and legal professionals, grew rapidly from the last quarter of the seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century. Lots more hospitals and institutions were established in London in the eighteenth century, and it was Britain’s largest manufacturing centre, its largest port, and the centre of governance, the professions, trade, and finance. Approximately one third of the population was involved in manufacturing. Retail occupations still made up a large proportion of those found in London - in this period one in nine Londoners kept a shop. Half of all employed women worked in domestic service in this period (compared to perhaps five percent of men). Beyond this, women were largely restricted to needlework and laundry, and the large numbers of unskilled and poorly paid employments associated with street selling and casual labour.
In the late-eighteenth century London was more geographically integrated in terms of social standing and occupation but, by the early nineteenth century the city had become increasingly subdivided between rich and poor. The divide between east and west was firmly entrenched and, therefore, the sorts of occupations you found in each area.
The East End was home to manufacturers, brewers and distillers, as well as those who worked in sugar processing and textiles. In St Giles in the fields and Farringdon, the majority made a living in the service industries of the capital - as porters, needle women, and street hawkers. The Square Mile was the home of financial services of insurance and merchant banking along with warehousing and trading. The West End was home to an increasingly wealthy elite - perhaps the richest in Europe at that time, and in response it became home to skilled craftsmen such as coach makers, and dancing masters.
In the early 1900s, London had the biggest workforce and largest local market, commercial banks, and the advantage of London’s large and deep port, and rail network. About two fifths of the working population was employed in manufacturing of one kind or another at this time. During the First World War some London businesses suffered, construction generally came to a halt and Britain’s export industry was weaker. However, manufacturing thrived, as London’s many factories were kept busy producing munitions, military equipment and other wartime requirements. Women moved into the jobs that men had left vacant and wages rose as employers had to compete for a smaller pool of workers.
During the Second World War, however, the decline of manufacturing in London began as businesses were forced to move away in order to avoid the German’s bombing of the dockside factories. The majority of these factories never returned to the area and with much of the infrastructure destroyed industry continued to migrate away from London in the 1950s. However, mechanisation and more efficient goods handling meant that once the port began to function again it surpassed pre-war tonnage and peaked in the 1960s. The process of de-colonisation led to a decline in trade through London. From the 1960s to 1980s all London’s docks closed with the exception of Tilbury. The vast area of docks lay empty and derelict with the loss of 25,000 direct jobs.
The decline of the manufacturing industry in London coincided with the enlargement of the financial services sector. At the end of the 1950s, UK regulations around foreign exchange were relaxed so the Square Mile took on a new role in the global foreign exchange trade. In the 1950s a negligible number of foreign banks had branches in London, but by the late 1990s the City could list almost six hundred. Yet probably the most significant event to boost London’s position in the world’s finances was the ‘Big Bang’ that took place in October 1986. Rules that separated different kinds of financial institutions were discontinued, allowing them the possibility to offer a full range of services to their clients. A year before Big Bang, the Bank of England had relaxed the rule that banking headquarters were obliged to be located within the City. During the same decade the government created a new enterprise zone in East London leading to the new financial district of Docklands.