Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment
Source: gov.uk (2025-07-10)

This series brings together the most up to date Digital Sector employment (number of filled jobs) datasets.

About

DSIT employment estimates provide an overview of those working in the Digital Sector and the UK overall. They provide a measure of the number of jobs supported by industries within the Digital Sector, and of the characteristics of those filling these jobs by demographic group. This enables assessment of the contribution of the Digital Sector to the UK economy, and a greater understanding of access to employment in the Digital Sector.

Due to the ongoing challenges with response rates, response levels and weighting, the accreditation of ONS statistics based on the Annual Population Survey (APS) was temporarily suspended on 9 October 2024. Because of the increased volatility of both Labour Force Survey (LFS) and APS estimates, the ONS advises that estimates produced using these datasets should be treated with additional caution - ONS statistics based on both the APS and LFS will be considered Official Statistics in Development until further review.

The statistics in this series will also be classified as Official Statistics in Development until further review. Previous releases in the Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment series have been classed as Accredited Official Statistics – meaning they comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. The Office for Statistics Regulation (https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/what-we-do/) (OSR) has now removed accreditation (https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/correspondence/ed-humpherson-to-jessie-evans-request-to-remove-accreditation/) at our request (https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/correspondence/jessie-evans-to-ed-humpherson-request-to-remove-accreditation/), following ONS reporting concerns (https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/correspondence/michael-keoghan-to-siobhan-tuohy-smith-request-to-suspend-aps-accreditation/) with the quality of estimates for smaller segments of the APS population, which the Digital Sector Economic Estimates: Employment series depends upon.

Included estimates:

DSIT currently release the following estimates for employment:
- headline measures of employment (number of filled jobs) are calculated based on the Annual Population Survey (APS) produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). These estimates are produced regularly with each dataset covering a 12 month period (4 quarters). These estimates contain a measure of headline employment in the Digital Sector (and UK overall) as well as breakdowns by various demographic characteristics
For information on how these estimates are produced please see the relevant technical report for each release.

In releases before April 2024, figures for the Digital Sector (and its subsectors, including Telecommunications) were produced by DCMS as part of their DCMS Sectors Economic Estimates series (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dcms-sectors-economic-estimates).

DSIT have recently concluded a consultation on the planned future of the Digital Sector Economic Estimates series - the DSIT response to this consultation can be accessed using this link (https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/dsit-digital-sector-economic-estimates-consultation).