South East · Baseline population 208,100
Official ONS figures for the region Portsmouth sits in, published June to August 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 Portsmouth-only figure.
UK average for the same period: unemployment 4.7%, employment 75.3%, inactivity 20.9%. South East ranks 8 of 12 UK regions and countries by unemployment rate.
186,430 people in South East were claiming unemployment-related benefits in September 2026, 3.8% of economically active residents, up 7,245 on September 2025. Among 16–24 year olds the count was 36,510, up 4,145 on the year. Not seasonally adjusted; this is an administrative count, not a survey estimate.
4,273,613 people were on a payroll in South East in September 2026, down 8,550 (0.20%) on the year, against 0.22% down across the UK as a whole. 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. On ONS's own like-for-like
comparison, HMRC payroll (RTI) records show payrolled employees
down 92,000 over the
year and down
37,000 over the quarter in
June to August 2026. Over the same period the Labour Force Survey shows employees
up 314,000 to
29.9 million. The provisional September
flash estimate puts payrolled employees at
30.3 million, down
66,000 on the year.
ONS attributes part of the LFS employee increase to improvements in the survey since January 2024, which have obtained more responses from employed people. Levels have therefore moved closer to RTI, but ONS cautions that LFS measures of change 'may be less aligned with RTI because they capture both real labour market shifts and changes arising from the survey improvements'. The divergence is concentrated in the 25 to 34 year old age group, which ONS is still investigating.
ONS's view remains that RTI 'currently provides the most reliable measure of employees'. As of the October 2026 release this statement appears in the LFS quality update rather than in the labour market overview bulletin itself.
We surface both rather than quietly picking one.
The August 2026 flash estimate reported a fall of 145,000 on the year; the confirmed figure is 111,000. Flash estimates are provisional and are routinely revised when more data arrive, so the September flash of -66,000 should be read as the least settled number here.
ONS research linking RTI
to the LFS, published 28 September 2026:
Linked HMRC PAYE data showed a stronger recovery in employment after the pandemic and a smaller, less prolonged rise in economic inactivity than the published LFS estimates alone suggested. It also suggested the LFS recovery during 2024 and 2025 may have reduced non-response bias, since using the linked payroll data made only a small difference to the level of employment and inactivity estimates in 2025. ONS describes the work as exploratory and is continuing the analysis.
The survey side is UK-wide; ONS publishes no regional split of this comparison. The payroll side is parsed from the ONS reference table (rtisaoct2026.xlsx). Source: ONS Labour market overview, UK: October 2026, released 20 October 2026. Next release 17 November 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 2026-10-22. 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 Portsmouth events — the tracker records the country a layoff was reported in, not the town or city, so nothing here is attributed to Portsmouth.
| 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 2026-10-22.
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.
Portsmouth has a structural advantage that most cities would envy and few would admit to wanting: its economy is heavily anchored by the military and the NHS, two institutions that automate slowly and employ locally. Public administration at 10.4% (boosted by the naval base) and health at 13.8% together account for nearly a quarter of all employment — a floor of demand that's determined by national security policy and healthcare need rather than market forces. Retail at 9.4% and admin at 9.2% create the familiar vulnerability surface, but at lower levels than most comparable cities. Portsmouth's score reflects this genuine structural protection. The risk isn't automation per se — it's what happens if the MOD ever decides the dockyard is expendable, at which point the entire economic model collapses overnight.
Portsmouth's economic strategy is basically 'the Navy is here and people get ill,' and you know what? In the age of AI, that's a better strategy than most. Health at 13.8%, public admin at 10.4% — nearly a quarter of the workforce is in sectors where robots can't do the job and algorithms can't replace the judgement. It's not glamorous, but it's more robot-proof than anything Swindon or Slough came up with. The dockyard repairs nuclear submarines, which is not the kind of work you hand over to a chatbot, and Derriford Hospital will need nurses long after the last admin assistant has been replaced by a workflow automation tool. The problem is everything else. Gunwharf Quays is a designer outlet mall on the waterfront that looks like what happens when an architect googles 'maritime regeneration' and clicks 'I'm feeling lucky.' Commercial Road is the actual high street, and it has the energy of a place that peaked when Woolworths was alive. Portsmouth exists because the Navy needs a harbour, and the harbour needs a city. When that equation changes — and it might not, but it might — Portsmouth becomes Gosport, and nobody wants to become Gosport.
The defence technology sector is Portsmouth's unique advantage — develop it aggressively into a cybersecurity, maritime autonomous systems, and defence AI cluster. The naval base creates permanent demand for these capabilities; ensure local firms and graduates capture the work rather than letting it flow to BAE in Farnborough or consultancies in London. QA Hospital's health sector should be developed with health-tech partnerships: telemedicine for the South Coast, clinical AI applications, and digital health record systems. The University of Portsmouth should build on its computing and cybersecurity programmes to create a talent pipeline that stays local. Southsea's creative and cultural economy is genuine and worth protecting with affordable workspace — it adds quality of life that attracts knowledge workers.
They'll talk about being a 'defence tech hub,' launch a 'Portsmouth Cyber' brand with a website and a logo, and attract three cybersecurity firms that employ twelve people each. The actual defence contracts will continue being won by BAE, Lockheed Martin, and QinetiQ — companies with offices in Portsmouth and decision-making in London. The dockyard will remain because nuclear submarines need maintaining, and this will be presented as economic development rather than what it actually is: strategic dependency. Gunwharf Quays will get another restaurant. Commercial Road will lose another shop. Someone will propose a 'Solent Innovation Zone' that competes with Southampton for the same investment and ends up splitting the same inadequate pot. The university will produce cybersecurity graduates who are immediately recruited by firms in Reading and London. Southsea will continue being pleasant and slightly expensive, attracting retirees and remote workers while the actual employment challenge persists two miles up the road. Portsmouth's economic plan is to hope the Navy stays. It's not much of a plan, but given the alternatives in this dataset, it's a surprisingly good one.
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 | 13.8% | 0.18 | low | 2.48 |
| Public Administration & Defence | 10.4% | 0.22 | low | 2.29 |
| Education | 9.6% | 0.15 | low | 1.44 |
| Retail | 9.4% | 0.8 | high | 7.52 |
| Administrative & Support Services | 9.2% | 0.85 | high | 7.82 |
| Accommodation & Food Services | 7.2% | 0.48 | medium | 3.46 |
| Financial & Insurance Services | 6.4% | 0.75 | high | 4.8 |
| Professional, Scientific & Technical | 5.8% | 0.3 | low | 1.74 |
| Manufacturing | 5.2% | 0.82 | high | 4.26 |
| Transport & Storage | 4.8% | 0.78 | high | 3.74 |
| Information & Communication | 4.8% | 0.5 | medium | 2.4 |
| Construction | 4.6% | 0.28 | low | 1.29 |
| Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | 3.9% | 0.2 | low | 0.78 |
| Wholesale | 3.8% | 0.55 | medium | 2.09 |
| Real Estate | 1.0% | 0.4 | medium | 0.4 |
| Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing | 0.1% | 0.25 | low | 0.03 |
The vulnerability score is a weighted average of Portsmouth'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 61.3 means Portsmouth's workforce is significantly concentrated in higher-weighted sectors compared with other United Kingdom cities in this dataset; it does not state a 61.3% probability of displacement.