Wales · Baseline population 362,756
Official ONS figures for the region Cardiff sits in, published May to July 2026. These are measured statistics, separate from the structural exposure score above — they are reported here as context and are not an input to it. Region-level data is the finest geography ONS publishes monthly; it is not a Cardiff-only figure.
UK average for the same period: unemployment 4.9%, employment 75.1%, inactivity 20.9%. Wales ranks 8 of 12 UK regions and countries by unemployment rate.
65,615 people in Wales were claiming unemployment-related benefits in August 2026, 4.3% of economically active residents, up 2,995 on August 2025. Among 16–24 year olds the count was 15,515, up 2,095 on the year. Not seasonally adjusted; this is an administrative count, not a survey estimate.
1,307,556 people were on a payroll in Wales in August 2026, down 7,276 (0.55%) on the year, against 0.48% down across the UK as a whole — Wales is shedding payrolled jobs faster than the national average. This is an administrative count of actual payroll records, not a survey estimate. The most recent month is a provisional flash estimate and is routinely revised.
The two UK-wide measures of employees disagree. HMRC payroll (RTI) records show payrolled employees down 101,000 over the year to July 2026, and down 144,849 on the year to 30.2 million in August 2026. Over the comparable period the Labour Force Survey shows employees up 111,000 to 29.8 million. ONS attributes much of the survey's rise to improved response rather than to hiring, and states that RTI currently provides the most reliable measure of employees. We surface both rather than quietly picking one. ONS publishes research linking RTI to the LFS on 28 September 2026.
The survey side is UK-wide; ONS publishes no regional split of this comparison. The payroll side is parsed from the ONS reference table (rtisasep2026.xlsx). Source: ONS Labour market overview, UK: September 2026, released 15 September 2026. Next release 20 October 2026.
Sources. ONS Labour market overview, UK (time series API); ONS Labour market in the regions of the UK (Table 2, annual changes); ONS Annual Population Survey, via NOMIS (variables, percentages); Claimant count by sex and age (Universal Credit + JSA), ONS/DWP via NOMIS; Earnings and employment from PAYE Real Time Information, seasonally adjusted (Table 7, payrolled employees by NUTS1 region). Retrieved 2026-09-25. LFS and APS outputs moved from “official statistics in development” to “official statistics” on 11 August 2026 and ONS is not seeking reaccreditation; survey-based detail should be read with that in mind. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Reported UK redundancy events from the CopeCheck Layoffs tracker. These are UK-wide, not Cardiff events — the tracker records the country a layoff was reported in, not the town or city, so nothing here is attributed to Cardiff.
| Reported | Company | Roles | Sector | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08 | University of Essex | 400 | Education | www.bbc.co.uk |
| 2026-08 | Nothing | 100 | Technology | Google Alerts RSS |
| 2026-08 | Travelport | 57 | Technology | Google Alerts RSS |
| 2026-08 | TSB | 130 | Banking | bmmagazine.co.uk |
| 2026-08 | Diageo | 38 | Food & Beverage | drinks-intel.com |
| 2026-08 | WPP | 1,267 | Advertising | gbnews.com |
| 2026-08 | Supermassive Games | 75 | Technology | Google Alerts RSS |
| 2026-08 | RNLI | 75 | Charity/Non-profit | Google Alerts RSS |
74 UK events recorded for 2026, of which 11 are attributed by their source at least partly to AI or automation. Counts are individual reported events, not a national total. The upstream tracker withholds aggregates because source claims may be syndicated, aggregate, planned, aliased or overlapping. These are UK-wide and are not attributed to this city. Compiled from layoffs.fyi, TrueUp, Crunchbase, TechCrunch, and news reports. Snapshot taken 2026-10-06.
Model-generated scenario commentary, not reported fact. Specific claims about future employer or council behaviour are hypothetical; use the sector table, not the prose, as the reproducible input to the score.
Cardiff benefits from a structural advantage unique among UK cities outside London: it's a national capital, and the Welsh Government's presence creates a layer of public-sector employment that's determined by constitutional arrangement rather than market forces. Public administration at 8.4%, health at 12.2%, and education at 10.4% together anchor over 31% of the workforce in sectors with strong natural resilience. The compound semiconductor cluster (IQE, SPTS Technologies) represents genuine deep-tech capability in a field that's critical to AI hardware. The creative sector around BBC Wales and Bad Wolf Studios adds cultural employment. Admin at 9.4% and retail at 9.2% create familiar vulnerability, but at levels below the dataset average. Cardiff's position is genuinely strong — the question is whether the city leverages its advantages into growth or merely coasts on its constitutional status.
Being the capital of Wales means Cardiff's biggest employer is the Welsh Government, and bureaucracies automate at roughly the speed of continental drift, which for once is actually the good news. Public admin at 8.4%, health at 12.2%, education at 10.4% — over 30% of the workforce is in sectors that exist because people need governing, healing, and teaching, none of which AI has cracked at scale. The Senedd employs people to make decisions, the university hospital employs people to treat patients, and BBC Wales employs people to make Doctor Who, and none of these are going away. The compound semiconductor cluster is genuinely impressive — IQE makes the chips that go into everything from 5G phones to defence systems — and it employs about 600 people, which is a lot for a chip fab and not a lot for a national capital. The Bay development turned Cardiff's docklands into a creditable cultural quarter, which is more than Swansea managed and less than Bristol achieved, putting Cardiff in its natural habitat: second to Bristol and ahead of everywhere in Wales. The St David's Centre is a shopping centre that works, mainly because it has no nearby competition. Cardiff's resilience is real but partly constitutional — take away the Senedd and the BBC and you've got a mid-sized city with nice architecture and the same problems as everywhere else.
Cardiff's compound semiconductor cluster is a genuine deep-tech strength that the UK's entire AI hardware strategy depends on — invest aggressively in skills, supply chain, and cleanroom capacity. The creative sector around BBC Wales, Bad Wolf, and S4C should be grown into a serious production hub with studio facilities that compete for international content. Partner with Cardiff University and the University of South Wales on applied AI programmes that serve both the tech cluster and the financial services sector. The public sector's scale should be leveraged for innovation: make Welsh Government services a testbed for responsible AI deployment that creates expertise as well as efficiency. Cardiff Bay has underused capacity for creative and tech workspace that should be developed with affordability protections.
They'll put 'compound semiconductors' in every Welsh Government press release for the next decade, fund another feasibility study for fab expansion, and continue relying on the Senedd and the NHS to employ everyone while Doctor Who keeps the Bay looking busy. IQE will continue doing genuinely important work that has almost no visible connection to the Cardiff economy — the chips ship globally and the employment stays small. BBC Wales will produce content that gets watched nationally and employs locally at a scale that makes for good press and modest employment numbers. Someone will propose a 'Cardiff Creative Quarter' that's indistinguishable from the existing Bay development. The St David's Centre will get a food hall. The Capitol Centre site will be debated for another five years. Cardiff University will produce AI research that's excellent and insufficient to offset the fact that the largest single employer in the city is the Welsh NHS. Cardiff will remain the best city in Wales by a comfortable margin, which is both true and the faintest of praise. The Senedd will keep the lights on. Whether anything else does is the question that gets asked at economic development meetings and answered with a PowerPoint about semiconductors.
Historical employment share by broad sector, with CopeCheck's heuristic exposure weight and contribution to the relative score. Higher weights contribute more; they are not probabilities.
| Sector | Employment % | Exposure Weight | Exposure Tier | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human Health & Social Work | 12.2% | 0.18 | low | 2.2 |
| Education | 10.4% | 0.15 | low | 1.56 |
| Administrative & Support Services | 9.4% | 0.85 | high | 7.99 |
| Retail | 9.2% | 0.8 | high | 7.36 |
| Financial & Insurance Services | 8.4% | 0.75 | high | 6.3 |
| Public Administration & Defence | 8.4% | 0.22 | low | 1.85 |
| Accommodation & Food Services | 7.2% | 0.48 | medium | 3.46 |
| Professional, Scientific & Technical | 7.2% | 0.3 | low | 2.16 |
| Information & Communication | 5.4% | 0.5 | medium | 2.7 |
| Manufacturing | 4.8% | 0.82 | high | 3.94 |
| Construction | 4.6% | 0.28 | low | 1.29 |
| Transport & Storage | 4.4% | 0.78 | high | 3.43 |
| Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | 3.6% | 0.2 | low | 0.72 |
| Wholesale | 3.4% | 0.55 | medium | 1.87 |
| Real Estate | 1.2% | 0.4 | medium | 0.48 |
| Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing | 0.2% | 0.25 | low | 0.05 |
The vulnerability score is a weighted average of Cardiff's sector employment shares. Each broad sector carries a CopeCheck heuristic exposure weight (0.0–1.0). Frey & Osborne's study estimated occupation-level susceptibility; it did not publish these sector weights. The bundled city files also lack record-level source dates and ledgers, so this is a historical structural comparison rather than an official current statistic. The weighted average is normalised to a 0–100 scale. A score of 63.4 means Cardiff's workforce is significantly concentrated in higher-weighted sectors compared with other United Kingdom cities in this dataset; it does not state a 63.4% probability of displacement.