HC Deb 10 November 1972 vol 845 cc266-7W
Mr. Biffen

asked the Secretary of State for Employment what are the estimated numbers of wage earners, salary earners and self-employed, respectively.

Mr. Dudley Smith

In the statistics of employment, employees are classified according to whether they are manual or non-manual workers rather than by whether their system of payment is by wages or salary. However, manual workers are often taken to correspond broadly with wage earners and non-manual workers with salary earners. Estimates for Demember, 1971, are given below:

Millions
Employees in employment of which 21.9
Manual workers 12.7
Non-manual workers 9.2
Employers and self-employed persons 1.7

It is expected that revised estimates of the numbers of employers and self-employed persons, which take account of information from the 1971 Census of Population, will be available shortly.