Jobs, business and skills in Portsmouth

What this answers: How many new businesses started up in a year?

Definition: Enterprises that were active in the year but not in either of the two previous years, from VAT and PAYE records on the Inter-Departmental Business Register.

• Counts are rounded by ONS to the nearest 5 to protect confidentiality.
• Each yearly edition revises earlier years. These figures all come from one edition, so they should not be mixed with figures from older editions.
• A business is counted where it is registered, not where its staff work. A company with branches across the country is counted once, at its registered address.
• Ups and downs can reflect waves of registrations at a single address, such as company formation agents.

Office for National Statistics: Business demography, UK: reference tables (2024 edition) ↗ · Published 20th November 2025 · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: How many businesses stopped trading in a year?

Definition: Enterprises active in the year that were no longer active in either of the next two years. ONS adjusts the latest two years for businesses expected to restart.

• Counts are rounded by ONS to the nearest 5 to protect confidentiality.
• Each yearly edition revises earlier years. These figures all come from one edition, so they should not be mixed with figures from older editions.
• A business is counted where it is registered, not where its staff work. A company with branches across the country is counted once, at its registered address.
• The latest two years (2023 and 2024) are provisional estimates and are usually revised.

Office for National Statistics: Business demography, UK: reference tables (2024 edition) ↗ · Published 20th November 2025 · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: How many businesses were trading in the area?

Definition: Enterprises that had turnover or employees at any time in the year.

• Counts are rounded by ONS to the nearest 5 to protect confidentiality.
• Each yearly edition revises earlier years. These figures all come from one edition, so they should not be mixed with figures from older editions.
• A business is counted where it is registered, not where its staff work. A company with branches across the country is counted once, at its registered address.

Office for National Statistics: Business demography, UK: reference tables (2024 edition) ↗ · Published 20th November 2025 · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: How many jobs are based in the area for every resident aged 16 to 64?

Definition: Jobs located in the area (employee jobs, self-employment, government-supported trainees and HM Forces) divided by the resident population aged 16 to 64. A value of 1.0 means one job for every working-age resident.

• Jobs are counted where they are, and people can commute in or out. A figure below 1.0 does not mean jobs are unavailable to residents.
• Nomis publishes local authority figures before 2011 under an older boundary type. The council areas shown kept the same codes and boundaries, and this script checked that the two versions give identical values in all 66 overlapping city-year figures before combining them.
• ONS changed the business survey behind employee jobs over the period (the Annual Business Inquiry was replaced by BRES in 2009), so small steps between years may reflect method rather than real change.

Office for National Statistics: Jobs density (Nomis NM_57_1) ↗ · Nomis dataset last updated as stated in its metadata on retrieval · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: How many apprenticeships did people living in the area start each year?

Definition: Apprenticeship starts in the academic year (August to July), counted by the learner's home local authority, all ages and levels. One person starting two apprenticeships counts twice.

• Figures are rounded by DfE to the nearest 10.
• England includes starts whose home area is unknown, so local figures do not add up exactly to the national total.
• 2019/20 and 2020/21 were affected by the pandemic.

Series breaks: 2017/18: The apprenticeship levy began in April 2017 and changed who funds and starts apprenticeships. Every year shown here is after the levy; earlier local figures sit in older DfE releases and are not mixed into this series.

Department for Education: Apprenticeships, academic year 2024/25: Geography LAD and PCON - starts, participation, achievements by age, sex, level ↗ · Academic year 2024/25 (full-year release) · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: Taking population size into account, how many residents start apprenticeships?

Definition: Apprenticeship starts by home local authority divided by the ONS mid-year estimate of residents aged 16 to 64 at 30 June inside that academic year (for example mid-2025 for 2024/25), times 1,000. Calculated by this script; DfE does not publish this rate for local authorities in this data set.

• A small number of apprentices are aged 65 or over; they are counted in the starts but not in the population.
• Population denominator from https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/api/v01/dataset/NM_2002_1.data.csv?geography=E06000044,E06000045,E07000225,E07000094,E07000123,E06000010,E12000008,E92000001&c_age=202,203&gender=0&measures=20100&date=latestMINUS15-latest&select=date_name,geography_code,c_age,c_age_name,obs_value.

Series breaks: 2017/18: All years shown are after the April 2017 apprenticeship levy.

Department for Education: Apprenticeships, academic year 2024/25: Geography LAD and PCON - starts, participation, achievements by age, sex, level ↗ · Academic year 2024/25 (full-year release) · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: What share of people aged 16 to 64 are neither in work nor looking for work?

Definition: People aged 16 to 64 who are economically inactive (not in work and not seeking or available for work), as a share of all residents aged 16 to 64. Includes students, carers, retired people and people who are sick or disabled.

• This is a sample survey estimate. The lower and upper figures are the ONS 95% confidence interval; for a single city the range is several percentage points wide.
• Changes between years should be read in percentage points and only treated as real when the ranges do not overlap.
• Survey response has fallen in recent years, which makes recent local estimates less reliable.

Office for National Statistics: Annual Population Survey - regional - employment status by age (Nomis NM_17_5) ↗ · January to December estimates · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: Among working-age people who are not working or looking for work, what share say long-term sickness is the main reason?

Definition: Economically inactive people aged 16 to 64 whose main reason for inactivity is long-term sickness or disability, as a share of all economically inactive people aged 16 to 64. It is not a share of all working-age residents.

• The base is the inactive group only, which is small in a single city, so the 95% confidence interval for Portsmouth is very wide (often more than 15 percentage points from end to end). Year-to-year movement in the city figure is mostly sampling noise.
• England's figure is precise enough to show the national trend.
• People report their own main reason; this is not a medical assessment.

Office for National Statistics: Annual Population Survey - regional - employment status by age (Nomis NM_17_5) ↗ · January to December estimates · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: How much of local employment is in hotels, guest houses, holiday lets and campsites (one proxy for the visitor economy)?

Definition: Employment (employees plus working owners) in SIC 2007 division 55 (accommodation), as a share of all employment counted in the area by BRES.

• This is a proxy, not a tourism statistic: it leaves out visitor spending in shops, attractions and transport and includes some non-tourist stays (for example contractors).
• BRES counts are rounded and local figures this small move in steps of a few hundred jobs, so changes of 0.1 to 0.3 percentage points are within rounding.
• 2020 and 2021 were affected by pandemic closures and furlough.

Office for National Statistics: Business Register and Employment Survey: open access (Nomis NM_189_1) ↗ · retrieved 2026-11-09

What this answers: How much of local employment is in food and drink service businesses?

Definition: Employment (employees plus working owners) in SIC 2007 division 56 (food and beverage service activities), as a share of all employment counted in the area by BRES.

• These businesses serve residents, students and workers as well as visitors, so this is only a loose indicator of the visitor economy.
• BRES counts are rounded, so small changes are within rounding.

Office for National Statistics: Business Register and Employment Survey: open access (Nomis NM_189_1) ↗ · retrieved 2026-11-09