Revealed: The UK’s best industries for job security in 2023

Life insurance broker Reassured has taken a closer look at different industries and ranked the most secure sectors looking at redundancy rates over the last 10 years.

The 10 best industries for job security in 2023:

Looking at the past 10 years, the top sector for job security is human health and social work. This industry has a redundancy rate of 1.43, closely followed by education with a rate of 1.49.

Public admin and law also appear to be the third most secure sector, holding a redundancy rate of 1.77. But then there is a substantial drop, with job security rates sitting at 3.51 and 3.61 when it comes to professional, scientific, and technical roles and the agricultural, fishing and utilities sector. But things are looking up for the agricultural industry as it has the least amount of redundancies compared to any other sector in 2021.

Looking at the years from 2011 to 2021 the public administration and defence sector saw the biggest decline in redundancies, in fact, in 2021 the sector saw 68.2% fewer redundancies. Construction saw 65% less job loss, however scientific and technical jobs (21.8%), manufacturing (20.1%) and hospitality services (19.5%) have seen the least changes over the 10-year period.

The UK’s best areas for job security

It would appear that Northern Ireland is the best location to seek secure employment, with a redundancy total of just 7,579. Even though the Northeast experiences nearly double the number of redundancies (14,663) the region comes in second, closely followed by Wales with 15,218 jobs made redundant.

Scotland (26,431) and the East Midlands (28,473) are regions with fewer redundancies. Considering the population in each region, Northern Ireland still shows the lowest redundancy rate (2.55), closely followed by Scotland with a rate of 2.81. Wales also had one of the lowest redundancy rates (3.00) and so did Yorkshire and The Humber (3.31).

A spokesperson from Reassured commented on the research: “With rising costs, many companies are experiencing significantly higher outgoings, potentially resulting in changes to a company’s structure. Unfortunately, this can subsequently affect the employees if job cuts are required. Whilst income protection insurance cannot protect against redundancy, it can cover you if you are injured or too ill to work. This reassuring safety blanket could help many people in the UK.”