Working Futures 2017-2027 projections for the Economic Regions of Wales are now available. Read the report, published by the Welsh government, here and access the Excel workbooks from the sub-regional projections link here.

Please note that these projections were created when it was expected there would be a negotiated Brexit and before the Covid-19 pandemic, which may result in considerable disruption to the UK and world economic system.

The Working Futures 2017-2027 projections, produced by the IER in collaboration with Cambridge Econometrics, were published by the Department for Education in February 2020.

The IER has now created a new web portal from which all the reports plus all the Excel workbooks containing the projections for UK nations and regions and Local Enterprise Partnerships within England can be downloaded.

Please note that these projections are based on employment estimates derived from published labour market data. They are not precise predictions of future employment levels, but represent the most likely trajectory of labour market change, given long-term trends in the economy and explicit assumptions about likely future economic change.

The forecasts were created when it was expected there would be a negotiated Brexit and before the Covid-19 pandemic, which has resulted in considerable disruption to the UK and world economic system.

The latest ‘Labour market and skills projections: 2017 to 2027', undertaken by IER’s Professor Rob Wilson and his team, including IER’s Sally-Anne Barnes, Derek Bosworth and David Owen and researchers at Cambridge Econometrics, have just been published by the Department for Education.

Working Futures 2017-2027 is the latest in a series of quantitative assessments of the employment prospects in the UK labour market over a 10-year horizon. It presents historical trends and future prospects by sector for the UK and its constituent nations and the English regions.

The study shows that overall the number of jobs in the UK is projected to rise by around 1 million over the next decade with more of these jobs expected to be taken by female workers than male. The unemployment rate is expected to rise slightly and the expansion of the UK's labour supply is forecast to slow over the next decade, curbed by slower population growth (than during 2007-2017) and an ageing population.

The reports are now available to download here. Follow the IER twitter account for updates on other published outputs from the study.