Photo: Eric Jones · CC BY-SA 2.0With 0.4 jobs for each resident in work, most of Comber commutes out
22% of measured journeys within Northern Ireland are under 5 km. The working day takes 2,488 residents elsewhere; 547 people arrive. There is no Jobs & income Grade for Comber.
Comber and work: the main findings
More people leave for work than arrive
547 people come in to work and 2,488 residents go out, so Comber loses about 1,941 workers a day. Newtownards sends the most (104). The daily tide ↓
Longer journeys to work
Against 52% across Northern Ireland’s towns. 5% of commuters walk to work (11% across Northern Ireland’s towns). Getting to work ↓
Written from the data on this page: NISRA Census 2021, Northern Ireland BRES 2024 and claimant counts from NISRA and Nomis.
10% of Comber’s commuters walk, cycle, or take the bus or train
Comber grades C for walkability: the share of commuters who walk, cycle or take public transport, against UK towns.
NISRA Census 2021, method and distance to workplace, complete data zones summed to settlements. Workplace travel excludes full-time students. Mode shares exclude home working; car pools count with drivers. Distance bands cover measured journeys within Northern Ireland only, excluding home working, no fixed workplace, Great Britain and overseas. Cross-border KPIs use all workers in the distance table. Census day was in lockdown.
How residents who travel to work get there, and how far they go (NISRA Census 2021, not counting those working mainly at home). Distance bands cover measured journeys within Northern Ireland.
Each working day, more people leave Comber for work than come in
4,127 residents were in work at the 2021 Census; 2,174 people worked in Comber.
For every person who comes in to work, about 5 residents travel out. 13% of residents who travel to a workplace stay in the town; in the typical UK town of 2,500+ it’s 14%.
The middle of each bar is the same people: residents who work in the town or from home.
Comber’s commuters work from Belfast to Newtownards
- Countryside200
- Newtownards104
- Bangor71
- Belfast43
- Metropolitan Castlereagh39
- Ballygowan18
- Lisburn13
- Killyleagh10
- Donaghadee8
- Saintfield8
- Belfast813
- Countryside490
- Metropolitan Castlereagh392
- Newtownards352
- Bangor128
- Metropolitan Newtownabbey56
- Holywood47
- Lisburn46
- Great Britain28
- Carryduff20
87% of residents who travel to a workplace work outside Comber; Belfast takes the most (813). Coming the other way, Newtownards sends the most (104).
The ten places that send the most workers into Comber, and the ten where its residents most often work (NISRA Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
1,446 jobs
NISRA BRES 2024 employee jobs by ward, shared to settlements by the share of each ward’s Census 2021 residents living there. Working owners and agricultural jobs are excluded. A part-time job and a second job each count once.
Jobs at workplaces in Comber (employee jobs, NISRA Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
Jobless claims in the Ards and North Down council area are below Northern Ireland’s rate
Ards and North Down’s rate was about 2.2% in 2019, peaked at 4.9% in May 2020 and has averaged 2.5% in 2026, against 2.9% across Northern Ireland and 4% across England and Wales. Universal Credit includes some people in low-paid work who are required to look for more work.
The chart is the whole council area of Ards and North Down, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Comber’s settlement. Claimant count: people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, or Universal Credit while required to look for work. Town counts are NISRA SOA counts shared by Census 2021 residents; rates divide the January–August 2026 mean by the settlement’s Census 2021 population aged 16–64. SOA counts are rounded to five.
Claimant rate since 2015: people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance or Universal Credit while looking for work, as a share of residents aged 16 to 64 (DWP, via Nomis).
29% of Comber’s adults have retired
NISRA Census 2021, economic activity and occupation, complete data zones summed to the settlement. Northern Ireland’s towns: the same best-fit data zones pooled across all 63 settlements.
Everyone 16 and over, by what they were doing the week before the 2021 Census, and the jobs of those in work.
Next to Comber: how nearby places compare
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comber | 9,529 | 1,446 | 13% | 2.8% | — |
| Ballygowan | 3,138 | 399 | 4% | 1.2% | — |
| Newtownards | 29,677 | 9,868 | 32% | 3.2% | — |
| Metropolitan Castlereagh | 58,763 | 29,738 | 20% | 2.1% | — |
| Carryduff | 7,173 | 1,755 | 7% | 1.5% | — |
| Holywood | 10,757 | 4,297 | 18% | 1.7% | — |
| Saintfield | 3,588 | 988 | 9% | 2.1% | — |
| Bangor | 64,596 | 16,362 | 40% | 2.4% | — |
Jobs based in each place, commuters who stay in their own town, and the claimant rate.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- The Census was taken in lockdown. NISRA’s Census was on 21 March 2021. Restrictions, furlough and home working affected the journeys recorded that spring. Workplace flows and travel tables exclude full-time students; economic activity and occupations include students in employment.
- Flows are shared from super data zones. Both ends of a NISRA super-data-zone flow are apportioned to settlements by their Census 2021 data-zone residents. NISRA identifies home working and no fixed workplace explicitly. Journeys within the same zone remain journeys, rather than being counted as home working. The flows cover residents of Northern Ireland; commuters arriving from outside Northern Ireland are absent.
- Towns are settlements. Comber here uses NISRA’s 2015 Settlement Development Limits and best-fit Census 2021 data zones. Fringe data zones can fall outside the settlement. Town-level figures are estimates from those zones, rather than council totals.
- Jobs are employee jobs. NISRA BRES 2024 ward totals are apportioned by where each ward’s Census residents live. The figures exclude working owners and agricultural jobs; the England and Wales figures include working owners. Ward industry breakdowns are not published in the BRES tables.
- Distance and travel mode have different bases. Distance bars cover measured journeys within Northern Ireland, leaving out home working, no fixed workplace and destinations elsewhere. Travel modes leave out home working but include people with no fixed workplace: NISRA’s published method table does not identify those people separately by mode. Cross-border figures are shares of all workers in the distance table.
- The benefits chart is the council area. Nomis publishes the claimant count monthly for councils back to 2013, so the line is Ards and North Down as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Comber’s settlement, estimated from NISRA SOA counts and Census 2021 residents aged 16–64.
Questions about work in Comber
Where do people in Comber work?
At the 2021 Census, 13% of Comber’s residents who travelled to work worked in the town itself; the most common other places were Belfast (813), Metropolitan Castlereagh (392) and Newtownards (352). 31% of working residents worked mainly at home or had no fixed workplace; the Census was taken in lockdown, so home working was unusually high.
How many people commute into Comber?
547 people who lived elsewhere worked in Comber at the 2021 Census, 25% of its 2,174 workers. The most came from Newtownards (104), Bangor (71) and Belfast (43). 2,488 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Comber?
About 1,450 jobs (employee jobs, excluding working owners and agriculture) were based in Comber in 2024, on NISRA’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 0.4 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town.
How do people in Comber get to work?
88% of commuters go by car or van, 5% walk, 1% cycle and 4% take the bus or train; 22% travel under 5 km. NISRA Census 2021, excluding full-time students and home workers, taken during lockdown.
Why doesn’t Comber have a Jobs & income Grade?
The grade needs three of four comparable measures: household income, claimant rates, employment deprivation and access to jobs. Northern Ireland has no comparable small-area household-income or job-access figures, and its deprivation index measures an earlier period.
Sources: NISRA Census 2021 ODWP01NI-UK workplace flows, super data zones shared to settlements by residents at both ends · NISRA Census 2021 economic activity, occupation, method of travel and distance to workplace, data zones best-fitted to 2015 Settlement Development Limits · NISRA Business Register and Employment Survey 2024, employee jobs by ward, shared by residents; working owners and agriculture excluded · NISRA PxStat CCMSOA, January–August 2026 SOA claimant counts, shared by residents over Census 2021 population aged 16–64 · DWP / ONS claimant count via Nomis, NI councils and Northern Ireland monthly since January 2015 · TownRatings grades: our own summary of the data, ranked against UK towns only. All under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains HM Land Registry data © Crown copyright and database right 2026. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026 (ONS boundaries). Northern Ireland: Source: NISRA; contains Land & Property Services data and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland information, © Crown copyright, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scotland: contains National Records of Scotland data, Registers of Scotland data and SEPA data, © Crown copyright / © SEPA 2025, licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.