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Chemicals and Fossil Fuels: Employment

Answer

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

The Rt Hon. the Lord Redwood

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

28 April 2026

As Permanent Secretary of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking how many jobs have been lost in the last year in the oil, gas, petrochemicals, refining and general chemical sectors (HL16637).

In December 2025, in the UK, there were an estimated 10,000 workforce jobs1 in the mining of coal and lignite; extraction of crude petrol/gas sector (standard industrial classification (SIC) divisions 05-06), a decrease of 2,000 compared with December 2024.

In December 2025, in the UK, there were an estimated 8,000 workforce jobs1 in the manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products sector (standard industrial classification (SIC) division 19), a decrease of 2,000 compared with December 2024.

In December 2025, in the UK, there were 99,000 workforce jobs2 in the manufacture of chemicals and chemical products sector (standard industrial classification (SIC) division 20), an increase of 2,000 compared with December 2024.

A full time series of data can be found in Table 1. Please note that these data are not

seasonally adjusted.

Table 1: Number of workforce jobs3 in the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and

semi-trailers sector, UK, not seasonally adjusted.

	Mining of coal and lignite; Extraction of crude petrol/gas	Manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products	Manufacture of chemicals and chemical products
December 2024	12,000	10,000	97,000
March 2025	12,000	10,000	95,000
June 2025	11,000	9,000	93,000
September 2025	11,000	8,000	93,000
December 2025	10,000	8,000	99,000

Source: Office for National Statistics

These data are published quarterly in tables JOBS03: Employee jobs by industry4 and JOBS04: Self-employment jobs by industry5. The most recent data, up to December 2025, were published as part of our Vacancies and jobs in the UK: March 20266 bulletin, which was published on 19 March 2026.

Yours sincerely,

Darren Tierney

1Estimates of workforce jobs include employee jobs and self-employment jobs only, these estimates

exclude any government supported trainees in these sectors.

2 Estimates are presented to the nearest 1,000 and changes have been calculated on rounded

estimates.

3 Estimates of workforce jobs include employee jobs and self-employment jobs only, these estimates

exclude any government supported trainees in these sectors.

4https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/d

atasets/employeejobsbyindustryjobs03

5https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/d

atasets/selfemploymentjobsbyindustryjobs04

6https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/b

ulletins/jobsandvacanciesintheuk/march2026

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

HL16637

Session

2024-26

Subjects

Chemicals Employment Fossil fuels Redundancy

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk