Photo: The Carlisle Kid · CC BY-SA 2.0A larger share of people claim jobless benefits in Oban than in 68% of UK towns
3% of people of working age are on jobless benefits; the typical UK town’s rate is 2.7%. Each working day, 1,380 people come into the town for work. No Jobs & income Grade is given to Oban.
What the numbers say about work in Oban
A local job centre
5,923 jobs are based in Oban for 4,117 working residents; the typical UK town has 0.7 jobs per resident in work. Shops, hospitals and health care and hotels and holiday accommodation make up 29% of them. Jobs based here ↓
Short journeys to work
Against 44% across Scotland’s towns. 26% of commuters walk to work, about 2.3 times the share across Scotland’s towns. Getting to work ↓
Written from the data on this page: Scotland’s Census 2022, ONS BRES and DWP claimant counts via Nomis.
5,923 jobs, 16% in hotels, pubs and restaurants
1.4 for every working resident; the typical UK town has 0.7.
BRES counts jobs, not people (a part-time job and a second job count once each), so it runs above the Census count of people working here (4,894). Data zones and intermediate zones are shared out to the town by where their residents live (Scotland’s Census 2022 has no workplace counts for areas small enough to place jobs more exactly); kinds of work are BRES industry divisions (SIC 2007), rounded. Scotland’s towns: all jobs in its towns.
Jobs at workplaces in Oban (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
Not by car: 32% of Oban’s commuters walk, cycle or ride the bus or train
Median journey 1.6 km; typical UK town 8.4 km.
80% of journeys to work are under 5 km (3 miles), against 44% across Scotland’s towns, and 6% are 30 km or more. Oban grades A+ for walkability: the share of commuters who walk, cycle or take public transport, against UK towns.
Scotland’s Census 2022, UV701 (method of travel) and UV703 (distance, straight line from home to workplace), output areas summed. Census day was 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census, so compare with Scotland’s towns rather than England’s.
How residents who travel to work get there, and how far they go (Scotland’s Census 2022, not counting those working mainly at home).
Each working day, Oban’s workforce swells by 19%
4,117 residents were in work at the 2022 Census; 4,894 people worked in Oban.
For every resident who leaves Oban for work, about 3 people come in. 75% 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.
Oban’s workers come from Helensburgh to Inverness
- Countryside1,238
- Helensburgh21
- Glasgow15
- Campbeltown12
- Rothesay9
- Dunoon8
- Greenock7
- Inverness6
- Dundee6
- Kirkcaldy and Dysart4
Helensburgh, 40 miles away, sends 21 people, more than any other town; in all, 28% of the people who work in Oban live outside it. Going the other way, Helensburgh is the biggest single destination (15).
The ten places that send the most workers into Oban, and the ten where its residents most often work (Scotland’s Census 2022, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
Jobless claims in the Argyll and Bute council area are below Scotland’s rate
Argyll and Bute’s rate was about 2.6% in 2019, peaked at 6.4% in May 2020 and has averaged 2.6% in 2026, against 3.1% across Scotland and 4% across England and Wales. Claims everywhere stay higher than before the pandemic, partly because Universal Credit counts more people on low pay as looking for work.
The chart is the whole council area of Argyll and Bute, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Oban’s locality. Claimant count: people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, or Universal Credit while required to look for work. Employment and income deprivation are from the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020 (benefit records from 2017 to 2019, so before the pandemic and older than the claimant figures): its 2011 data zones are shared out to the town by where their residents live. The “most deprived tenth” compares areas within Scotland only.
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).
63% of Oban’s adults have a job
Scotland’s Census 2022, tables UV601 (economic activity) and UV606 (occupation), output areas summed to the locality. Scotland’s towns: everyone living in its towns.
Everyone 16 and over, by what they were doing the week before the 2022 Census, and the jobs of those in work.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- The Census was a year later in Scotland. Scotland’s Census was taken on 20 March 2022, a year after England and Wales’s lockdown census, so more people were back at their workplaces. Commuting figures compare fairly with Scotland’s other towns, less so with England’s.
- Flows are by data zone. National Records of Scotland publishes where people live and work by data zone (about 800 residents), not by the smaller output areas England and Wales use. A zone that straddles a town’s edge is shared out by where its residents live, so the flows here are close, not exact.
- At home and no fixed place are one figure. NRS puts people who mainly work at home and people with no fixed workplace (drivers, builders, care workers on rounds) at their home address, so the two are counted together.
- Towns are localities. Oban here is NRS’s Census 2022 locality: the town as built, not its council area. A workplace outside every town counts as “outside any town”.
- Jobs are counted where they are. BRES counts jobs at each workplace (employees and working owners, rounded by ONS), so a town with a hospital, university or big employer can have more jobs than working residents. Data zones are shared out to towns by where their residents live.
- The benefits chart is the council area. Nomis publishes the claimant count monthly for councils back to 2013, so the line is Argyll and Bute as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Oban’s locality, from small areas.
Questions about work in Oban
Where do people in Oban work?
At the 2022 Census, 75% of Oban’s residents who travelled to work worked in the town itself; the most common other places were Helensburgh (15), Rothesay (9) and Glasgow (8). 46% of working residents worked mainly at home or had no fixed workplace.
How many people commute into Oban?
1,380 people who lived elsewhere worked in Oban at the 2022 Census, 28% of its 4,894 workers. The most came from Helensburgh (21), Glasgow (15) and Campbeltown (12). 551 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Oban?
About 5,920 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Oban in 2024, on ONS’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 1.4 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town. The biggest kinds of work are shops (about 660), hospitals and health care (about 600) and hotels and holiday accommodation (about 500).
How do people in Oban get to work?
66% of commuters go by car or van, 26% walk, 1% cycle and 5% take the bus or train; 80% travel under 5 km. Scotland’s Census 2022.
Why doesn’t Oban have a Jobs & income Grade?
The grade needs three of four measures: household income, the claimant rate, employment deprivation and access to jobs. Scotland publishes household income only for council areas, its deprivation index (SIMD 2020) uses benefit records from before the pandemic rather than England’s 2025 index, and the job-access measure covers England and Wales only, so Scottish towns have the claimant rate alone.
Sources: NRS, Scotland’s Census 2022 origin-destination Table 5a (location of usual residence and place of work, 2022 data zones), shared to the Census 2022 locality · Scotland’s Census 2022 tables UV601 (economic activity), UV606 (occupation), UV701 (method of travel) and UV703 (distance) · ONS Business Register and Employment Survey via Nomis (open access), 2022 data zones and intermediate zones, by industry division · DWP claimant count via Nomis (towns January to August 2026; councils, Scotland and England and Wales monthly since January 2015) · Scottish Government, Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation 2020v2, indicators and domain deciles · 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.