West Midlands · Baseline population 256,375
Official ONS figures for the region Stoke-on-Trent 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 Stoke-on-Trent-only figure.
UK average for the same period: unemployment 4.7%, employment 75.3%, inactivity 20.9%. West Midlands ranks 2 of 12 UK regions and countries by unemployment rate.
204,770 people in West Midlands were claiming unemployment-related benefits in September 2026, 6.8% of economically active residents, up 6,100 on September 2025. Among 16–24 year olds the count was 45,105, up 4,780 on the year. Not seasonally adjusted; this is an administrative count, not a survey estimate.
2,621,009 people were on a payroll in West Midlands in September 2026, down 1,615 (0.06%) 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 Stoke-on-Trent events — the tracker records the country a layoff was reported in, not the town or city, so nothing here is attributed to Stoke-on-Trent.
| 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.
Stoke-on-Trent has already lived through one economic extinction event — the collapse of the ceramics industry that defined the city for centuries. The replacement economy that emerged was built on manufacturing (13.2%), retail (11.8%), and admin support (10.8%), which felt like pragmatic diversification at the time. The problem is that all three of those sectors are now converging on the same automation cliff edge. Stoke adapted once, painfully, over decades. The question facing the city now is whether it can do it again, faster, with fewer resources and less time. The health and education sectors at 9.1% and 8.9% provide some floor, but not nearly enough to absorb the displacement coming from sectors that together employ over a third of the working population. Reinvention is in Stoke's DNA, but DNA alone doesn't pay mortgages.
Stoke swapped pottery for warehouses and call centres, which felt like progress until AI showed up with a better offer. The city spent fifty years grieving the Potteries, finally accepted its new identity as 'affordable Midlands logistics hub with a bet365 office,' and now gets to discover that identity has a shelf life too. Manufacturing at 13.2% is alarming enough, but it's the combination with admin and retail that really stings — three legs of the stool, all being sawn off simultaneously. bet365 is the one genuine success story, and it's a gambling company that's already investing heavily in AI-driven customer service. The regeneration websites talk about Stoke's 'proud heritage' and 'can-do attitude,' which is what you say about a place when you've run out of economic arguments. The Potteries Shopping Centre has a 20% vacancy rate that's doing more honest economic forecasting than the council's development team. Out of the kiln, into the automation fire, and the fire doesn't even need anyone to tend it.
Stoke's leadership should build on the ceramics heritage in a way that actually connects to the modern economy — advanced materials manufacturing, 3D printing, and technical ceramics for aerospace and medical applications. These are sectors where the city's industrial DNA is genuinely relevant and the skills transfer is real, not just a branding exercise. The bet365 success story proves that digital businesses can thrive here with the right talent; create incentives to cluster more tech companies around that anchor. The university partnership with Keele should focus on applied research that creates local jobs, not just publications. The city also needs to be honest about the retail sector: the Potteries Centre and Hanley High Street are not coming back in their current form, and planning policy should reflect that rather than pretending footfall is a temporary dip. Repurpose empty retail space for maker spaces, training centres, and small-scale manufacturing — things that actually employ people in Stoke, not things that look good in a strategy document.
They'll open a ceramics museum extension, launch a 'Stoke Creates' marketing campaign with a logo that cost £40,000, and wonder why graduates still leave for Birmingham at the first opportunity. The council will announce a 'Digital Stoke' initiative that amounts to better wifi in the library and a coding bootcamp that produces twenty graduates a year. bet365 will continue to be name-dropped in every economic development presentation despite the fact that it's one company, it's a gambling operation, and it's actively automating its own workforce. Someone will propose turning the old pottery sites into 'artisan workshops,' which will attract four potters and a candle maker. The empty shops in Hanley will become charity shops, which will become empty shops again. A Levelling Up bid will be submitted, succeed or fail by margins that have nothing to do with Stoke's actual needs, and the money — if it arrives — will go on a road improvement that makes it easier to drive to somewhere else. In five years, the same people will be at the same table having the same conversation about Stoke's potential.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing | 13.2% | 0.82 | high | 10.82 |
| Retail | 11.8% | 0.8 | high | 9.44 |
| Administrative & Support Services | 10.8% | 0.85 | high | 9.18 |
| Human Health & Social Work | 9.1% | 0.18 | low | 1.64 |
| Education | 8.9% | 0.15 | low | 1.33 |
| Transport & Storage | 7.4% | 0.78 | high | 5.77 |
| Accommodation & Food Services | 5.9% | 0.48 | medium | 2.83 |
| Construction | 5.8% | 0.28 | low | 1.62 |
| Wholesale | 5.6% | 0.55 | medium | 3.08 |
| Public Administration & Defence | 5.2% | 0.22 | low | 1.14 |
| Financial & Insurance Services | 5.1% | 0.75 | high | 3.82 |
| Professional, Scientific & Technical | 3.9% | 0.3 | low | 1.17 |
| Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | 3.2% | 0.2 | low | 0.64 |
| Information & Communication | 2.8% | 0.5 | medium | 1.4 |
| Real Estate | 0.8% | 0.4 | medium | 0.32 |
| Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing | 0.5% | 0.25 | low | 0.12 |
The vulnerability score is a weighted average of Stoke-on-Trent'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 80.9 means Stoke-on-Trent's workforce is significantly concentrated in higher-weighted sectors compared with other United Kingdom cities in this dataset; it does not state a 80.9% probability of displacement.