The UK Data Service provides access to a wide range of data from the 2021 Census, which is useful for the work of researchers and data professionals from a wide range of sectors. We also hold historical data in our collection from previous censuses and will be releasing more data throughout the rest of this year.
All of the releases for the 2021 Census so far have been from the Office for National Statistics for England and Wales (ONS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency for Northern Ireland (NISRA). All the published univariate and multivariate datasets are available via the UK Data Service.
Up until the end of March this year both agencies concentrated on headline figures and then the simple statistical (univariate) tables within each of the key topic areas:
- Age
- Demography
- Education
- Ethnic group, national identity, language and religion
- Health
- Housing
- International migration
- Labour market
- Sexual orientation and gender identity
- Travel to work
- UK armed forces veterans.
From 28 March 2023, the ONS started releasing the more complex multivariate tables that cover cross topic data – for example there are tables available on ‘Ethnic group by sex and age’ and ‘Veterans by disability’. There have been 126 multivariate table released for England and Wales so far, all of which are now available to download from the UK Data Service along with the univariate tables and data from earlier censuses. You can browse our census data catalogue using tags or by topic area.
NISRA will be releasing their multivariate data in the summer of 2023, when both census agencies will also be unveiling a flexible table builder to allow users to create their own tables where the data permits.
Scotland will start releasing their first headline figures from their census (carried out in 2022) later in 2023, but no publishing dates have been announced.