The Annual Business Survey (ABS), carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), includes statistics on employment broken down by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2007). In wood processing, SIC 16 (wood products) and SIC 17 (pulp, paper and paper products) have a much wider scope than the data on employment in primary wood processing (Table 7.2), as they include primary processing of imported material and also some secondary processing.

The Annual Business Survey recorded average employment in 2014 of 16 thousand in forestry and 27 thousand in primary wood processing (sawmilling, panels and pulp & paper) (Table 7.1).

Source: Annual Business Survey – average employment in year (Office for National Statistics, June 2016)

Notes:

1. Categories are based on the UK Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2007) categories. Further details on the SIC codes used are provided in the Sources: Employment and businesses page.

2. Excludes other wood-using industries.

3. Pulp and paper breakdowns for 2010 to 2014 have been suppressed in the figures released by ONS. The figures shown here are estimated from 2008 figures.