Photo: Wheatley Hill · CC BY-SA 4.0Making a living in Styal
On a working day 22 residents travel out to work, and 9 people travel in. Jobs and income go ungraded in Styal. Jobless benefit claims cover 8% of working-age residents, against 2.7% in the typical UK town.
What Styal’s work numbers say
More jobs than the typical town
69 jobs are based in Styal for 60 working residents; the typical UK town has 0.7 jobs per resident in work. Head offices and management consulting, banking and finance and care homes make up 51% of them. Jobs based here ↓
More benefit claims than most towns
The typical UK town: 2.7%; England and Wales: 4% so far in 2026. Claims across the Cheshire East council area have run below the national rate every month since 2015. Benefits over time ↓
Written from the data on this page: ONS Census 2021 and BRES, DWP claimant counts via Nomis, and ONS household income.
69 jobs, 43% in professional, scientific and technical
1.1 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 (47). Small areas are shared out to the town by where their Census 2021 workers were based; kinds of work are BRES industry divisions (SIC 2007), rounded. England’s towns: all jobs in its built-up areas.
Jobs at workplaces in Styal (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
Jobless claims in the Cheshire East council area have run below England and Wales every month since 2015
Cheshire East’s rate was about 1.8% in 2019, peaked at 4.6% in May 2020 and has averaged 2.3% in 2026, against 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 Cheshire East, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Styal’s built-up area. Claimant count: people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, or Universal Credit while required to look for work. Employment deprivation counts people out of work on Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Incapacity Benefit, Severe Disablement Allowance, Carer’s Allowance or the Universal Credit equivalents (English Indices of Deprivation 2025). The “most deprived tenth” compares areas within England 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).
Where Styal’s commuters go
- Crewe4
- Manchester3
- Countryside3
- Macclesfield2
- Clifton2
- Weston1
- Middlewich1
- Winsford1
- Mobberley1
- Disley1
in all, 19% of the people who work in Styal live outside it.
The ten places that send the most workers into Styal, and the ten where its residents most often work (Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
Mean household income: £55,863 a year
Higher than 60% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of Cheshire East averages £52,942.
The town figure is ONS’s neighbourhood (MSOA) estimates shared out by where the town’s residents live.
Total household income before tax, mean, year to March 2023 (ONS small-area estimates).
How the places next to Styal compare on work
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Styal | 143 | 69 | — | 8% | — |
| Wilmslow | 25,716 | 19,933 | 18% | 1.9% | A |
| Cheadle Hulme | 24,782 | 8,008 | 12% | 1.4% | A+ |
| Wythenshawe | 97,665 | 80,432 | 41% | 4.7% | C− |
| Gatley | 9,149 | 1,686 | 5% | 1.9% | A |
| Alderley Edge | 4,496 | 3,891 | 12% | 1.9% | A |
| Cheadle | 14,437 | 9,844 | 10% | 2.8% | B− |
| Bramhall | 17,201 | 8,662 | 8% | 1.5% | A+ |
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. Census day was 21 March 2021, during the third national lockdown: many people were furloughed or working from home, so fewer travelled to work, and journeys were shorter, than before the pandemic or since. The flows on this page show where people worked that spring.
- At home and no fixed place are one figure. In the workplace flows, ONS puts people who mainly worked at home and people with no fixed workplace (drivers, builders, care workers on rounds) at their home address, so the two can’t be told apart there.
- Towns are built-up areas. Styal here is ONS’s built-up area: the town as built, not its council district. A workplace on an estate or farm outside every built-up area counts as “outside any built-up area”.
- 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. Small areas are shared out to towns by where their Census workers were based.
- The benefits chart is the council area. Nomis publishes the claimant count monthly for councils back to 2013, so the line is Cheshire East as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Styal’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Styal
How many people commute into Styal?
9 people who lived elsewhere worked in Styal at the 2021 Census, 19% of its 47 workers. The most came from Salford (2), Bollington (1) and Poynton (1). 22 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Styal?
About 70 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Styal in 2024, on ONS’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 1.1 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town.
What is the average household income in Styal?
Mean household income before tax was £55,863 in the year to March 2023 (ONS), against £52,385 in the typical UK town.
How does Styal compare with Warrington for jobs?
Styal has 1.1 jobs per working resident against Warrington’s 1.6, a 8% claimant rate against 2.8%, and mean household income of £55,863 against £50,319.
Sources: ONS Census 2021 origin-destination data, place of work (ODWP01EW), output areas summed to the ONS 2022 built-up area · ONS Census 2021 tables TS058 (distance), TS061 (method of travel), TS063 (occupation) and TS066 (economic activity) · ONS Business Register and Employment Survey via Nomis (open access), by industry division · ONS small-area income estimates (financial year ending 2023); House of Commons Library MSOA names · DWP claimant count via Nomis (towns January to August 2026; councils, regions and England and Wales monthly since January 2015) · MHCLG English Indices of Deprivation 2025 · DfT Transport Connectivity Metric (employment) · 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.