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Annual Population Survey: persons in Wales in employment by country of birth and year

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Next update expected:22 July 2026

Updates

22nd April 2026

Quarterly update

21st January 2026

Quarterly update

16th October 2025
9th October 2025
Dataset first published.

Main information

Designation
Accredited official statistics
Data provider
Office for National Statistics (ONS)
Data source
Annual Population Survey (APS)

Overview

Summary of dataset and variables

This dataset provides information on migrant workers in Wales from all over the World with a breakdown between data relating to countries in the European Union (EU), and elsewhere.

Data collection or calculation

The APS asks respondents for their country of birth, nationality and where they were living twelve months ago. This dataset provides information by country of birth, as for Wales it is not possible to use the data on movement in the last twelve months as samples are too low to provide reliable estimates, and responses to the nationality question can be difficult to interpret.

The country of birth data gives the total number of people who were born in each country and so does not directly give estimates of the number of migrants. However, changes in the level give an idea of the level of migration. With these data it is also important to realise that the numbers will also include British people who were born abroad if, for example, their parents were working overseas at the time.

There are two main reasons why the APS may under-estimate the number of residents born overseas, particularly over the short to medium term. These are as follows:

  • The LFS and APS sampling frame only covers private households and NHS accommodation. Students in halls of residence are also covered but only if they have a parent living in a UK household. So students in halls of residence without a UK resident parent are not covered. Additionally people living in other types of communal establishment such as hotels, hostels, boarding houses, caravans/mobile homes are not covered. Many foreign workers may live in these types of accommodation.

  • The APS has a four-year wave pattern. Each respondent is included in the survey for four consecutive years. As a result there will be a delay before new groups arriving in the population are properly represented in the sample. The LFS and APS is also weighted to be representative of the population totals in each area. However, these population estimates exclude those visiting the UK for less than twelve months.

The wave pattern of the APS means there is a four-year time lag before new arrivals are properly represented in the sample, so it is not the best source for showing short-term trends. However the APS does provide a wealth of other information, such as economic activity, type of employment, age, sex, ethnicity and qualifications. This is particularly the case at the UK level. For Wales, even with the boosted APS sample, there are still relatively few households where people were born overseas. This means that, at present, detailed breakdowns at a Wales level will often not meet quality constraints.

Nomis is the ONS's official portal for labour market statistics. Note that some estimates from Nomis for the APS may differ slightly from those presented here due to differences in how local authority geographies are constructed.

Statistical quality

Annual Population Survey (APS) responses are weighted to official population projections. The projections for 2020 were 2018-based, and, therefore, were based on demographic trends that pre-dated the COVID-19 pandemic.

To allow for different trends during the pandemic the responses for the APS have been reweighted on the 9 September 2021 to new populations derived using growth rates from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) Real Time Information (RTI). The reweighting has been applied from year ending March 2020 data onwards and gives improved estimates of both rates and levels.

The changes ONS have made to the weighting should reduce the bias of estimates at high levels of aggregation. Some smaller breakdowns may be impacted negatively and more extreme changes could be seen given the reduced size of the underlying sample since the start of the pandemic.

As the data come from a survey, the results are sample-based estimates and therefore subject to differing degrees of sampling variability, i.e. the true value for any measure lies in a differing range about the estimated value. This range or sampling variability increases as the detail in the data increases, for example individual local authority data are subject to higher variability than Wales data.

Rounding applied

Figures are rounded to the nearest hundred and so there may be some apparent slight discrepancies between the sum of constituent items and the totals as shown.

Related reports

Published by

Organisation
Welsh Government
Contact email
labourmarket.stats@gov.wales