Policy paper

Chapter 1: Introduction

Published 11 September 2024

Highlights

A person experiences social mobility when they have different life outcomes from their parents, for example, in income, occupation, housing, education or wealth.

Our long-term vision is to report a consistent set of social-mobility statistics over time – our Social Mobility Index. In line with this, we have created a new website to host it, and we have also updated most of the statistics reported there since last year’s report. 

We have made further improvements to our geographical reporting by creating a composite index of intermediate (early-life) outcomes at the upper-tier local authority (LA) level.^{[footnote 1]} This has allowed us to split the UK into 203 geographical areas, instead of 41, as we had last year. 

The Social Mobility Commission 

The Social Mobility Commission (SMC) exists to monitor social mobility across the UK and make recommendations on social mobility in England. We aim to understand how many people are socially mobile, in what parts of the country, and whether a person’s background is limiting opportunity. Social mobility is important because it means the circumstances of birth do not limit what you can achieve – no matter what your starting point, you can go on to lead a fulfilling life. 

Improving our reporting 

Tracking and charting mobility is complex, so we have worked hard on improving how we show our findings. We have also looked for innovative ways to strengthen our monitoring, by improving our Social Mobility Index (SMI). 

In our 2022 annual report, we introduced our new, comprehensive Index, reporting for the first time on a full range of mobility outcomes and drivers, and laying the foundation for consistent reporting over time. 

In our 2023 annual report, we published:

• new mobility outcomes, in addition to jobs and earnings, looking at people’s education, home ownership, and wealth, in comparison with their parents’
• an improved range of intermediate outcomes, focusing on younger people’s education and employment
• updated drivers of social mobility, giving us an idea of the background conditions that might help or hinder social mobility in the future, including those relating to social capital and connections, as well as innovation and growth
• breakdowns of outcomes and drivers by geography and by protected characteristics, where possible, to better understand where social mobility was and wasn’t working, and for whom^{[footnote 2]}

Finally, to ensure our findings were more accessible, we developed an interactive data explorer to help identify regional differences in mobility outcomes. 

This year, we have taken things one step further. We continue to make improvements to our reporting by refining our composite indices (summative measures).^{[footnote 3]} We’ve also improved our geographical breakdowns, drilling down to the level of upper- or single-tier LAs. This gives us much greater insight into how outcomes vary locally rather than regionally.

Our goal remains to provide a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of social mobility trends across the UK, ensuring that everyone has a fair opportunity to fulfil their potential, and to succeed regardless of their birth circumstances.

Overview of the Index

In 2022, we launched our new SMI to measure mobility clearly and systematically across a person’s lifetime. Our Index includes over 40 indicators that cover early years through to late adulthood. 

We include social mobility outcomes, looking at people’s jobs and earnings at different life stages, in comparison with their parents’. We also report on some drivers or background conditions that might help or hinder social mobility in the future. 

What is social mobility?

The term ‘social mobility’ can have many meanings. In this report, we use it to refer to intergenerational social mobility. This means that a person experiences social mobility when they have different life outcomes from their parents. 

This could mean a different income level, a different occupational class or other differences, such as housing or education. Mobility can also be upwards or downwards. But what all these approaches have in common is a concern with the chances for people born and brought up in one kind of situation to move up or down the social ladder to a higher or lower position than, or to stay in the same position as, their parents.

For example, if you have a professional occupation and your parents had a working-class occupation, you have experienced upward occupational mobility. Or if you have a high income and your parents had a lower income at the same age, you have experienced upward income mobility.

The new framework has 2 types of measure: outcomes (mobility and intermediate) and drivers.

Mobility outcomes

Mobility outcomes compare your starting point in life, based on your parents’ position, to your own eventual position as an adult. For example, we might compare the income of a person’s parents with the person’s own income around the age of 50 years. We look at occupation, income, education, housing and wealth, where the data allows. 

Analysis of most mobility outcomes relies on data from panel or birth cohort studies, which aren’t always updated yearly. We have therefore reported the same figures as last year for the mobility outcomes and included them in our online data explorer that complements this report.

Intermediate outcomes

For intermediate outcomes, we look at people’s progress from their parents’ position to their own position at an earlier point in life, such as employment in their 20s or educational attainment at age 16 years. We track this because a person’s early outcomes can be a very good indicator of how their later life will turn out. It also means that we have an early snapshot of mobility without having to wait to assess outcomes much later in life.

We break both mobility and intermediate outcome measures down by people’s socio-economic background (SEB), so that we can see how different starting points might affect progress to later points.^{[footnote 4]}

Drivers

Unlike the outcomes, drivers are forward-looking. They represent the national or local background conditions that make social mobility easier (or more challenging). We include indicators that affect aggregate, not individual, rates of mobility. For example, the availability of good schools or work opportunities are drivers, because they help groups of people who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to be socially mobile. The question of what is or is not a driver is also distinct from the question of what might help an individual achieve upward mobility (like getting a good degree, for example).

With the drivers, we look at these conditions across the UK and not by SEB. This is an important distinction from the mobility and intermediate outcomes.

Absolute and relative mobility measures

Absolute measures capture the number of people who have experienced mobility. They are usually expressed as percentages of the population. For example, the absolute occupational mobility rate is the percentage of people who are in a different occupational class from their parents. For income mobility, a common absolute measure is the percentage of people whose income is higher than their parents’ income was, at the same age. We can compare these rates across different regions of the UK.

Relative measures compare the chances that at least 2 groups have of reaching, versus avoiding, a particular outcome. It is this element of comparison that makes such measures relative. A relative mobility measure tells us that one group has better chances than another, rather than telling us the total number of socially mobile people. Low relative mobility means that those who start life in a particular position are more likely than others to be in the same position later in life. For that reason, low relative mobility can be thought of as ‘stickiness’, while high relative mobility can be thought of as ‘fluidity’.

Composite indices 

As in last year’s report, we feature composite indices, covering some of our drivers and intermediate outcomes. We call them composite indices, because they summarise multiple drivers, or intermediate outcomes, in one score. They give us a summary of how different geographical areas of the UK compare on the main dimensions of mobility that we have identified from the data. 

The composites also allow us to be more confident in drawing conclusions about any differences between geographical areas. Estimates for individual areas in most cases involve sampling errors (since they are based on sample surveys, like the Labour Force Survey (LFS)).^{[footnote 5]} There’s therefore always a risk that differences between areas in respect of a single measure could be due to random sampling errors. To get around this imprecision, we summarise findings across multiple indicators that seem to be related. And, when multiple measures all give a similar picture, we can confidently say that there are real differences between the areas. We can then begin to ask whether these differences are due to the areas themselves or the individuals living within them. 

Socio-economic background

We measure SEB using the same 5-part grouping that we introduced last year.^{[footnote 6]} This grouping uses the occupational classes in the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) National Statistics Socio-economic Classification system (NS-SEC).^{[footnote 7]} There are 8 ‘analytic’ classes in the NS-SEC, and we grouped them into 5 categories: ‘higher professional and managerial’, ‘lower professional and managerial’, ‘intermediate’, ‘higher working class’, and ‘lower working class’. 

We use this grouping to look not only at a person’s socio-economic or occupational background – in other words, what job a person’s parents did – but also what jobs people are currently doing. For example, if we say that someone has a ‘higher professional background’, this means that their parents had a higher professional or higher managerial occupation.^{[footnote 8]}

Previous groupings included only 3 categories – ‘professional and managerial’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘working class’. However, these categories were broad and did not provide enough information to understand short-range mobility. Using 3 categories also meant that there was considerable variation within each category. 

How do we measure socio-economic background (SEB)?

SEB reflects a person’s starting point. A person’s SEB is measured by looking at their parent’s socio-economic situation when they were growing up. For example, this might be the parents’ occupational class, income or education. So for instance, we might look at whether one or both of a person’s parents had a degree when the person was a child.

Throughout our report, we often report on SEB, as it’s recorded in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) – a representative sample survey to provide information on the UK’s labour market. In this survey, participants are asked about their current jobs and what job the main earner in the household did when they were age 14 years. This enables us to look back at someone’s SEB without having to track the same individual across all the intervening years. The LFS also covers the whole of the UK, in line with the SMC’s statutory obligations.

We can now look at short- and long-range mobility, as well as important differences within the professional and working-class groups with these 5 categories. For example, we can determine if someone from a lower working-class background now works in a higher working-class occupation. 

Table 1: Our 5-part grouping of occupational classes based on the NS-SEC.

NS-SEC	Previous 3-part grouping	5-part grouping	Example occupations
1	Professional and managerial	Higher professional, including higher managerial, administrative and professional	Chief executive officer of large firm, doctor, clergy, engineer, senior army officer
2	Professional and managerial	Lower professional, including lower managerial, administrative and professional	Teacher, nurse, office manager, journalist, web designer
3 and 4	Intermediate[footnote 9]	Intermediate, including intermediate occupations, small employers and freelance workers	Clerical worker, driving instructor, graphic designer, IT engineer, shopkeeper, hotel manager, taxi driver, roofer
5 and 6	Working class	Higher working class, including lower supervisory, technical and semi-routine workers	Foreman, mechanic, electrician, train driver, printer, shop assistant, traffic warden, housekeeper, farmworker
7 and 8	Working class	Lower working class and workless families	Cleaner, porter, waiter, labourer, refuse collector, bricklayer

Occupational class versus earnings

Types of jobs are not always tied to how much you earn. Sometimes people in lower occupational classes earn more than those in higher occupational classes. For example, speech and language therapists count as higher professionals, NS-SEC 1, because their job requires a first degree for entry and experience-related training, and the practical application of a body of knowledge to instruct others. Yet their average salary is lower than that of many working-class occupations, including some routine manual occupations.

Example occupations, their NS-SEC classes and median salaries

• Speech and language therapists: NS-SEC 1 – higher professional. Median salary: £31,932.
• Train and tram drivers: NS-SEC 5 – higher working class. Median salary: £63,807.
• Air conditioning and refrigeration installers and repairers: NS-SEC 6 – higher working class. Median salary: £39,818.
• Large goods vehicle drivers: NS-SEC 7 – lower working class. Average salary: £36,847.^{[footnote 10]}

There can also be great variation in earnings within a class. For example, teaching assistants earn an average of £19,033, and rail travel assistants earn an average of £36,080, yet both occupations are classified as ‘intermediate’.^{[footnote 11]} Apart from different salaries, these jobs may also have very different working conditions. 

And, finally, 2 people doing the same type of work can be in different classes if one is an employee and the other is self-employed since the self-employed tend to be classed as intermediate. For example, a bricklayer who is an employee would be in NS-SEC 7, lower working class, while a self-employed bricklayer would be in NS-SEC 4, intermediate class. The salaries in these 2 cases may also be very different. 

Improvements this year

We have made significant improvements since last year’s report, providing richer detail and greater insights. We outline these changes below.

New composite indices

Our Index remains comparable with the one we published last year. However, we keep our list of indicators under review to make sure that we are capturing what matters. We have updated some indicators and improved our summary measures, which we call composite indices. 

We now have a single composite index for intermediate outcomes at the upper-tier LA level. This gives us 203 geographical regions across the UK, instead of the 41 regions that we had last year. This index, called Promising Prospects, covers highest qualifications, hourly earnings, and also the professional and working-class occupations of young people. 

Similarly, we have developed 3 new composite indices of drivers at upper-tier LA level, giving the same 203 geographical regions. The first index based on drivers is called Conditions of Childhood. This covers childhood poverty, parental education, parental working-class occupation, and parental professional occupation. The second index based on drivers is Labour Market Opportunities for Young People. This covers unemployment, professional employment, and working-class employment. Finally, we have retained our composite index that looks at research and development, but improved it so that it also gives us 203 regions. This index is now called Innovation and Growth. A more detailed explanation of our methodology can be found in the technical annex. 

New geographical breakdowns 

In 2023, we provided new geographical breakdowns for some of our indicators. To do so, we used regions defined by the ONS’ International Territorial Level (ITL) classification framework.^{[footnote 12]} We focused on breakdowns at the level known as ITL2, which divides the UK into 41 regions. Each region had between 800,000 and 3,000,000 inhabitants and contained about 4 upper-tier LAs.

This year, we improve upon this analysis and provide more detailed geographical breakdowns. We have divided the UK into 203 upper- or single-tier LAs.^{[footnote 13]} LA areas vary greatly in terms of the numbers of inhabitants, but they are more recognisable as geographical divisions, and they have policy responsibility for education and transport (among other things). In doing this, we have made significant progress on our policy framework objective of developing the data and methods for place-based approaches.

We provide this analysis by combining indicators into summary formulas (in other words, composited indices) and pooling together more years of the LFS data and wider age bands. Doing this allows us to increase the sample sizes so that we can publish separate figures for each upper- or single-tier LA.

Differences between International Territorial Level 2 (ITL2) and local authority (LA) breakdowns

In some areas of the UK, local government is divided between a county council (upper-tier LA) and a district council (lower-tier LA), which are responsible for different services. In other areas, there is a single-tier (unitary) LA instead. This year’s analysis breaks the UK down by upper-tier and single-tier LAs. There are 203 such LA areas across the UK in our analysis. In Northern Ireland, data limitations have meant that we cannot provide further geographical breakdowns, so instead we present Northern Ireland as a single geographical unit. 

Last year, we provided breakdowns at ITL2, which included areas comprising roughly 4 upper-tier LAs for a total of 41 regions. At ITL2, for example, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire were grouped as one region. This year, they are considered separately.

Figure 1.1: The 203 LA levels of the UK included in our analysis.

Source: ONS Open Geography Portal, ITL geography hierarchy boundaries, January 2021.^{[footnote 14]}

Note: The map shows the 203 LA areas of the UK in our analysis. Our data did not allow us to divide Northern Ireland into smaller geographical areas. 

Figure 1.2: The 203 LA levels of the UK split by larger regions of the UK.

Figure 1.2a: The 203 LA levels of the UK split by larger regions of the UK in detail.

Source: ONS Open Geography Portal, ITL geography hierarchy boundaries, January 2021.^{[footnote 15]}

Figure 1.2b: The 203 LA levels of the UK split by larger regions of the UK in detail.

Source: ONS Open Geography Portal, ITL geography hierarchy boundaries, January 2021.^{[footnote 16]}

Note: Our data did not allow us to divide Northern Ireland into smaller geographical areas. 

Figure 1.2c: The 203 LA levels of the UK split by larger regions of the UK in detail.

Source: ONS Open Geography Portal, ITL geography hierarchy boundaries, January 2021.^{[footnote 17]}

Figure 1.2d: The 203 LA levels of the UK split by larger regions of the UK in detail.

Source: ONS Open Geography Portal, ITL geography hierarchy boundaries, January 2021.^{[footnote 18]}

Table 1.3: The 203 upper-tier LA areas of the UK in our analysis.

Number	Region
1	Camden and City of London
2	Westminster
3	Kensington and Chelsea
4	Hammersmith and Fulham
5	Wandsworth
6	Hackney
7	Newham
8	Tower Hamlets
9	Haringey
10	Islington
11	Lewisham
12	Southwark
13	Lambeth
14	Bexley
15	Greenwich
16	Barking and Dagenham
17	Havering
18	Redbridge
19	Waltham Forest
20	Enfield
21	Bromley
22	Croydon
23	Merton
24	Kingston upon Thames
25	Sutton
26	Barnet
27	Brent
28	Ealing
29	Harrow
30	Hillingdon
31	Hounslow
32	Richmond upon Thames
33	Manchester
34	Salford
35	Trafford
36	Stockport
37	Tameside
38	Bolton
39	Wigan
40	Bury
41	Oldham
42	Rochdale
43	Blackburn with Darwen
44	Blackpool
45	Lancashire county council
46	Cheshire East
47	Cheshire West and Chester
48	Warrington
49	Halton
50	Knowsley
51	St Helens
52	Liverpool
53	Sefton
54	Wirral
55	Durham
56	Hartlepool
57	Stockton-on-Tees
58	Middlesbrough
59	Redcar and Cleveland
60	Darlington
61	Northumberland
62	Newcastle upon Tyne
63	North Tyneside
64	South Tyneside
65	Gateshead
66	Sunderland
67	Cumbria
68	Hull
69	East Riding of Yorkshire
70	North East Lincolnshire
71	North Lincolnshire
72	City of York
73	Barnsley
74	Doncaster
75	Rotherham
76	Sheffield
77	Bradford
78	Leeds
79	Calderdale
80	Kirklees
81	Wakefield
82	Derby
83	Derbyshire county council
84	Nottinghamshire county council
85	Nottingham
86	Leicester
87	Rutland
88	Leicestershire county council
89	North Northamptonshire
90	West Northamptonshire
91	Lincolnshire county council
92	Herefordshire
93	Worcestershire county council
94	Warwickshire county council
95	Telford and Wrekin
96	Shropshire
97	Stoke-on-Trent
98	Staffordshire county council
99	Birmingham
100	Suffolk county council
101	Coventry
102	Norfolk county council
103	Solihull
104	Dudley
105	Sandwell
106	Luton
107	Walsall
108	Wolverhampton
109	Peterborough
110	Cambridgeshire county council
111	Hertfordshire county council
112	Bedford
113	Central Bedfordshire
114	Southend-on-Sea
115	Thurrock
116	Essex county council
117	Buckinghamshire
118	Bracknell Forest
119	West Berkshire
120	Reading
121	Slough
122	Windsor and Maidenhead
123	Wokingham
124	Milton Keynes
125	Oxfordshire county council
126	Brighton and Hove
127	East Sussex county council
128	Surrey county council
129	West Sussex county council
130	Portsmouth
131	Southampton
132	Isle of Wight
133	Hampshire county council
134	Medway
135	Kent county council
136	Bristol
137	Bath and North East Somerset[footnote 19]
138	Plymouth
139	Torbay
140	Swindon
141	Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole
142	Cornwall and Isles of Scilly
143	Devon county council
144	Dorset
145	Gloucestershire county council
146	Somerset county council
147	Wiltshire
148	North Yorkshire county council
149	Isle of Anglesey
150	Gwynedd
151	Conwy
152	Denbighshire county council
153	Flintshire county council
154	Wrexham
155	Powys county council
156	Ceredigion county council
157	Pembrokeshire county council
158	Carmarthenshire county council
159	Swansea
160	Neath Port Talbot
161	Bridgend
162	Vale of Glamorgan
163	Rhondda Cynon Taf
164	Merthyr Tydfil
165	Caerphilly
166	Blaenau Gwent
167	Torfaen
168	Monmouthshire county council
169	Newport
170	Cardiff
171	Aberdeen City
172	Aberdeenshire
173	Angus
174	Argyll and Bute Islands
175	Scottish Borders
176	Clackmannanshire
177	West Dunbartonshire
178	Dumfries and Galloway
179	Dundee City
180	East Ayrshire
181	East Dunbartonshire
182	East Lothian
183	East Renfrewshire
184	City of Edinburgh
185	Falkirk
186	Fife
187	Glasgow
188	Highland
189	Inverclyde
190	Midlothian
191	Moray
192	North Ayrshire
193	North Lanarkshire
194	Orkney Islands
195	Perth and Kinross
196	Renfrewshire
197	Shetland Islands
198	South Ayrshire
199	South Lanarkshire
200	Stirling
201	West Lothian
202	Na h-Eileanan Siar
203	Northern Ireland

Where the data doesn’t allow us to break the UK down into smaller regions, we use the 41 ITL2 regions of the UK for our analysis. 

Table 1.4: The 41 ITL2 regions of the UK in our analysis.

Number	ITL2 region (and the ITL1 region that contains it)
1	Inner London – West (London)
2	Inner London – East (London)
3	Outer London – South (London)
4	Outer London – East and North East (London)
5	Outer London – West and North West (London)
6	Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire (East of England)
7	Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxford (South East England)
8	Cheshire (North West, England)
9	Cornwall and Isles of Scilly, (South West England)
10	Cumbria (North West England)
11	Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire (East Midlands, England)
12	Devon (South West England)
13	Dorset and Somerset (South West England)
14	East Anglia (East of England)
15	East Yorkshire and Northern Lincolnshire (Yorkshire and the Humber, England)
16	Essex (East of England)
17	Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol and Bath area (South West England)
18	Greater Manchester (North West England)
19	Hampshire and Isle of Wight (South East England)
20	Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire (West Midlands, England)
21	Kent (South East England)
22	Lancashire (North West England)
23	Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire (East Midlands, England)
24	Lincolnshire (East Midlands, England)
25	Merseyside (North West, England)
26	North Yorkshire (Yorkshire and the Humber, England)
27	Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland)
28	Northumberland and Tyne and Wear (North East England)
29	Shropshire and Staffordshire (West Midlands, England)
30	South Yorkshire (Yorkshire and the Humber, England)
31	Surrey, East and West Sussex (South East England)
32	Tees Valley and Durham (North East England)
33	West Midlands (West Midlands, England)
34	West Yorkshire (Yorkshire and the Humber)
35	West Wales and The Valleys (Wales)
36	East Wales (Wales)
37	Highlands and Islands (Scotland)
38	Eastern Scotland (Scotland)
39	West Central Scotland (Scotland)
40	Southern Scotland (Scotland)
41	North Eastern Scotland (Scotland)

1. In some areas of the UK, local government is divided between a county council (upper-tier LA) and a district council (lower-tier LA), which are responsible for different services. In other areas, there is a single-tier (or ‘unitary’) LA instead. ↩

2. According to the Equality Act 2010, protected characteristics are age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, and race (including colour, nationality, and ethnic or national origin). It is against the law to discriminate directly against someone with any of these characteristics. ↩

3. A composite index is an analytical technique that allows you to group several measures together to create a composite score. ↩

4. In our reporting, a person’s SEB means the socio-economic situation of their parents. For example, this might be the parents’ occupational class, income or education. So for instance, when we talk about someone with a “higher professional background”, we mean that at least one of their parents had a higher professional occupation when this person was a child. ↩

5. “The LFS is a study of the employment circumstances of the UK population. It is the largest household study in the UK and provides the official measures of employment and unemployment”. Office for National Statistics, ‘Labour force survey’, 2021. Published on ONS.GOV.UK. ↩

6. Social Mobility Commission, ‘State of the nation 2023: people and places’, 2023. Published on GOV.UK. ↩

7. The Office for National Statistics collects, analyses and shares statistics about the UK’s economy, society and population. ONS, ‘The national statistics socio-economic classification (NS-SEC)’, 2021. Published on ONS.GOV.UK. ↩

8. The LFS asks respondents what the occupation of the main earner in the household was when the respondent was aged 14 years. This is what we use when reporting SEB using the LFS. ↩

9. Some routine occupations can count as intermediate if the worker is self-employed. ↩

10. Office for National Statistics, ‘Earnings and hours worked, occupation by four-digit SOC: ASHE table 14a’, 2023. Published on ONS.GOV.UK. ↩

11. Office for National Statistics, ‘Earnings and hours worked, occupation by four-digit SOC: ASHE table 14a’, 2023. Published on ONS.GOV.UK. ↩

12. A code used to subdivide the UK geographically for statistical purposes. Office for National Statistics, ‘Territorial levels UK, international territorial levels’, 2021. Published on ONS.GOV.UK. ↩

13. In some areas of England, local government is divided between a county council (upper tier) and a district council (lower tier), which are responsible for different services. In other areas, there is a single unitary authority instead. ↩

14. ONS Geography, ‘ITL geography hierarchy boundaries’, 2021. Published on GEOPORTAL.STATISTICS.GOV.UK. ↩

15. ONS Geography, ‘ITL geography hierarchy boundaries’, 2021. Published on GEOPORTAL.STATISTICS.GOV.UK. ↩

16. ONS Geography, ‘ITL geography hierarchy boundaries’, 2021. Published on GEOPORTAL.STATISTICS.GOV.UK. ↩

17. ONS Geography, ‘ITL geography hierarchy boundaries’, 2021. Published on GEOPORTAL.STATISTICS.GOV.UK. ↩

18. ONS Geography, ‘ITL geography hierarchy boundaries’, 2021. Published on GEOPORTAL.STATISTICS.GOV.UK. ↩

19. Bath and North East Somerset includes the 3 unitary authorities of Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. ↩