Employment by sector

The number of people in employment in VAT / PAYE registered businesses by industry. North East sector specialisms.

Labour market Newcastle North Tyneside South Tyneside Durham Gateshead Sunderland Northumberland
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Employment by industry group

About the source

  • The Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) is an annual survey of employers
  • it is undertaken each September with the results published about 12 months later
  • only businesses that are registered for VAT and/or PAYE purposes are surveyed
  • it provides official estimates of the number of employees in each industry sector
  • a further variable, employment, gives estimates of the combined number of employees and working owners
  • BRES does not include all employment as it omits self-employed workers in unregistered businesses
  • it also excludes HM Forces employees and government supported trainees.

Further sector detail

Industry divisions

The ONS breaks down registered enterprise employment into 88 industry divisions:

  • only 83 divisions have workers within the North East
  • the number of divisions varies among the 19 broad industry groups
  • for example, the three public administration, health and education industry groups are only broken down into five divisions
  • on the other hand, the single manufacturing group is divided into 24 divisions.

North East specialisms

Broad industry comparisons

Among the 19 broad industry groups in 2022, the share of North East employment in registered enterprises differed from that in England as a whole. In particular:

  • The North East employment in public administration and defence was 7.2% of the total compared to 4.2% in England, a 3.0 pp difference
  • the shares of North East employment in manufacturing, health, and education were also all more than 1.5 pp higher than nationally
  • in contrast, the employment share of  professional, technical and scientific activities was almost 4 pp lower than nationally
  • North East employment shares in information and communication and in wholesale were both also more than 1.5 pp lower than in England.

Industry divisions, top 20 LQs

This table shows the 20 industry divisions (out of 88 in total) that had the highest North East employment location quotients in 2022. Some division names have been simplified.

The LQs have been calculated by the North East LEP from rounded totals. Divisions with North East employment of less than 300 have been excluded from the analysis due to small sample sizes. The table is sorted by SIC code so that divisions are grouped within broad industries.