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 on health and safety (Table 7.3 and Figure 7.1) have been revised since Forestry Statistics 2015. For further details on revisions, see the Employment section of the Sources chapter.

A copy of all Employment & Businesses tables is available to download from the Tables for Download page.

Key findings

The main findings are:

• The Annual Business Survey reported average employment in 2014 of 16 thousand in forestry and 27 thousand in primary wood processing.
• There was estimated to be a total of 7.5 thousand full time equivalent staff employed by primary wood processors in the UK in 2015, a 1% decrease from the total for 2014.
• Accident rates in forestry and wood products have tended to decline in recent years, but are still higher than the averages in agriculture and manufacturing respectively.
• There were 231 establishments in the primary wood processing industries in the UK using UK-grown roundwood in 2015.