Working Futures 2017-2027 is the seventh in a series of quantitative assessments of employment prospects in the UK labour market over a 10 year horizon. It has been created by Cambridge Econometrics and the Warwick Institute for Employment Research. It presents historical trends and future prospects for output and employment by industry sector for the UK and its constituent nations and the English regions. The prime focus of Working Futures is on the demand for skills as measured by employment by occupation and qualification, although labour supply measures are also included. Working Futures is intended to provide useful labour market information that can help to inform policy development and strategy around skills, careers and employment, for both policy makers and a much wider audience. The projections were prepared in late 2019 and early 2020 and are based on a view of the likely medium-term evolution of the economy at that time.

A set of Excel workbooks have been created containing projections for the UK, its constituent nations, the regions of England, the Local Enterprise Partnerships within England and the Welsh Economic Regions. All of these can be downloaded from the links lower down this web page.

If you would like to be kept up-to-date with the Working Futures project and/or register your interest in the LEP workbooks, please complete the form here.

Sub-national/sub-regional workbooks

Sub-national/sub-regional workbooks (for Economic Regions in Wales and Local Enterprise Partnerships in England) can only be accessed by persons who have obtained access to "safeguarded" BRES data via Nomis, or hold a Chancellor’s Notice for access to BRES data. Please note: this must be access granted to you as an individual applicant (or as a person named on another person's application). If you are already authorised to use safeguarded BRES data and have been sent the password necessary to access the sub-national/sub-regional workbooks, click on the link below to go to the download page. If you do have authorisation but do not yet have a password, please complete this form and you will be sent the password which provides access to this page and the workbooks listed on it.

Caution in interpreting the projections

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 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. These projections indicate what the labour market might have looked like before the pandemic. They, therefore, can be used to provide a measure of how the labour market has changed and the implications of the pandemic.

Click here to download sub-national/sub-regional workbooks

Guidance for those who are not yet authorised, but want to access sub-national/sub-regional workbooks

The Excel workbooks for subnational and subregional areas contain data derived from the Annual Business Inquiry (ABI) and Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES). Access to and dissemination of such data is subject to the terms of the Statistics of Trade Act 1947. Only those who have been authorised by the Office for National Statistics to access "safeguarded" data from BRES may view the contents of these workbooks. It is a criminal offence to pass data within these workbooks on to a third party (including other individuals within your own organisation) who do not have such authorisation. It is also a criminal offence to publish the data in such a manner as to allow the identification of individual respondents to BRES.

In order to become authorised to use "safeguarded" BRES data, you must first have your own Nomis account. You can register for a Nomis account by clicking here.

After signing in to your NOMIS account, click here to apply for access to safeguarded BRES data. N.B. only UK based individuals may apply for access to safeguarded BRES data. NOMIS will e-mail you to notify you that you have been granted access. Once you have been authorised, please complete this form attaching a screen shot of the NOMIS page confirming that you are authorised to access "safeguarded" BRES data (and/or a copy of the e-mail from ONS) and we will send you the password you need in order to access the sub-regional workbooks download page. An example of the NOMIS page is presented below:

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National and regional workbooks

Excel workbooks containing results for the nations of the UK and regions of England can be downloaded without restriction by clicking on the links in the table below. If you need to produce tables or charts for dates other than those presented in the workbook, please email workingfutures@warwick.ac.uk for advice.’

Region	Workbook name	Size	Download
London	LO_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
South East	SE_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
East of England	EE_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
South West	SW_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
West Midlands	WM_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
East Midlands	EM_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
Yorkshire and the Humber	YH_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
North West	NW_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
North East	NE_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
Wales	WA_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
Scotland	SC_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
Northern Ireland	NI_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
England	EN_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
Great Britain	GB_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download
United Kingdom	UK_MainTables.Main.xlsm	2MB	Download

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This page provides access to reports and workbooks from the latest in a series of projections of employment.

The results from the first six Working Futures excercises (undertaken for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills) are available from the IER "Working Futures" webpage.

The full set of reports and Excel workbooks produced by Working Futures 2014-2024 are available from Working Futures 2014-2024

Published reports from the Working Futures 2017-2027 projections can be downloaded by clicking on the icons below: