Census 2021: Greater Manchester Topic Briefings

Background

The 2021 census was held in England and Wales on 21 March 2021. The census has been taken every ten years since 1801 (except 1941).

Census data is being released throughout 2022 and 2023 for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It provides comprehensive and localised data on Greater Manchester’s population to support policy makers in finding reliable answers to some of the key questions facing the city region.

This was a ‘digital-first’ census with most people completing it online and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is making the latest census information as easy as possible to use online. There is a regular and increasingly rich flow of data arriving on a whole range of topics including residents’ background (such as ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation), housing, health, and work.

Topic Briefings for Greater Manchester

The GMCA’s Research Team are producing a series of topic briefings on Census 2021 so that a range of audiences can understand the high-level messages and findings from the data as it is released. Our fundamental questions for these summaries will be: what does the data tell us about Greater Manchester and the 10 districts within the city region, and what are the implications for future policy? We will also signpost access to the complete datasets and more information from ONS to enable further analysis.

The order in which topic briefings are produced and published will be informed by the ONS departmental plan (external website) for the release of Census 2021 data and analysis. National releases include first results, topic summaries, multivariate data and specialist data, so our local publication plan will be flexible and subject to a regular review and sense checking exercise.

Briefings within our first release can be accessed by using the links on this page.

Total Population

Image containing ONS graphic with an image of a passport and the text "Demographics & migration census results are here"

Households

Children and Young People

ONS graphic with an image of a passport and the text "Demographics & migration census results are here"

Ageing

Car Ownership

Approximated Social Grade

Social Class

Image containing ONS graphic with an image of two buildings and the text "Housing census results are here"

Housing Tenure

Ethnicity

Religious Identity

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Health

Image containing ONS graphic with an image of a mortarboard and the text "Education census results are here"

Highest Level of Qualification

Occupations

Economic Inactivity

Working Time

Forward Look

Over the next month, we are likely to be working on briefings in relation to the following topics:

Children and young people

Anyone interested in discussing the briefings published on this page, or keen to make contact with the Research Team more generally, can reach the team on the following contact email:

research@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk

Useful Wider Resources

Topic briefings are not designed to provide the full detail on any given topic, but the ONS and other bodies are producing some fantastic resources that interested audiences may wish to explore further. Some of the main things we’d recommend are as follows: