Introduction

This chapter contains information on:

• employment in forestry and wood processing;
• health & safety; and
• numbers of businesses.

All of the statistics presented in this chapter relate to UK totals. Further information on the data sources and methodology used to compile the figures is provided in the Sources chapter.

Most of the statistics presented in this chapter have been previously released. Some of the figures in this chapter have been revised since Forestry Statistics 2022. For further details on revisions, see the Employment section of the Sources chapter.

A copy of all Employment & Businesses tables can be accessed in spreadsheet format from the Data Downloads page.

Key findings

The main findings are:

• The Business Register and Employment Survey (May 2023) reported average employment in 2021 of 20 thousand in forestry, 8 thousand in sawmilling and 5 thousand in panel mills.
• There was estimated to be a total of 7.6 thousand full-time equivalent staff employed^[1] by primary wood processors in the UK in 2022, a 2% increase from the total for 2021.
• The latest major accident rates for Great Britain, covering 2021/22, show increases compared to 2020/21 rates for forestry, wood product and pulp, paper and paper product sectors.
• There were 194 establishments in the primary wood processing industries in the UK using UK-grown roundwood in 2022.

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[1]There are a number of differences in the scope of the employment estimates provided by the Business Register and Employment Survey (BRES) and the full-time equivalent figures obtained from the annual surveys of the UK timber industry run by Forest Research (FR). In particular, the BRES figures cover employment by all businesses in the relevant sectors that pay VAT and/or PAYE. This will include businesses that do not use UK grown timber. The FR surveys include businesses below the VAT and PAYE thresholds but exclude businesses that do not use UK grown timber.

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