Working Papers 65, 66: London's sectors: detailed jobs data & method

Key information

Publication type: General

Publication date: Sunday 29 March 2015

This paper sets out a time series of jobs by sector (and sub-sectors) in London over time and assesses the extent of London’s specialisation in these sectors.
The Professional, scientific, technical and real estate activities sector is the largest sector (in terms of jobs) in London (816,000) in 2013 and is an area of a significant specialisation when compared to the rest of Great Britain. Human health and social work activities is the second largest sector by number of jobs, accounting for 10.4 per cent of all jobs in the capital, followed by Administrative and support service activities (9.9 per cent) and Retail (7.9 per cent).
London also has a very significant specialisation in the Information and communication sector with almost a third (32.2 per cent) of all employee jobs in Great Britain located in the capital, whilst the Financial and insurance activities sector contributes around 362,000 jobs in London and around a third of all employee jobs in Great Britain.
Working Paper 66 provides detail of the methodology used to derive the time-series of jobs in London. The methodology builds upon work previously undertaken by GLA Economics and outlines the datasets used and assumptions made.