Introduction

This chapter contains information on:

• employment in forestry and wood processing;
• health and 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 Chapter 10: Sources and Methodology.

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 2023. For further details on revisions, see Chapter 10: Sources and Methodology.

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

Key findings

The main findings are:

• The Business Register and Employment Survey (October 2023) reported average employment[1] in 2022 of 21 thousand in forestry.
• There was estimated to be a total of 7.2 thousand full-time equivalent staff employed by primary wood processors in the UK in 2023, a 4% decrease from the total for 2022.
• The latest major accident rates for Great Britain, covering 2022/23, show increases compared to 2021/22 rates for forestry and wood product sectors, and a slight decrease for the pulp, paper and paper sector.
• There were 188 establishments in the primary wood processing industries in the UK using UK-grown roundwood in 2023.

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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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