Photo: David Smith · CC BY-SA 2.0Exeter has 1.7 jobs for every resident in work
On a working day the city fills up: 26,291 people commute in. 73% of residents who travel to work go less than 3 miles. Exeter grades B for jobs and income against UK towns, #3 of 47 in Devon.
What Exeter’s work numbers say
A local job centre
98,845 jobs are based in Exeter for 57,750 working residents; the typical UK town has 0.7 jobs per resident in work. Hospitals and health care, education and public administration and defence make up 37% of them. Jobs based here ↓
Short journeys to work
Against 45% across England’s towns. 23% of commuters walk to work, about 2.1 times the share across England’s towns. Getting to work ↓
Written from the data on this page: ONS Census 2021 and BRES, DWP claimant counts via Nomis, and ONS household income.
Exeter grades B for jobs and income
Better than 64% of UK towns on four measures together: #3 of 47 in Devon.
Its strongest measure is getting to jobs without a car; its weakest, employment deprivation.
How the grade works
Each input is ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more (higher income and job access are better; fewer claimants and less employment deprivation are better), the four ranks are averaged, and the average is ranked again. A town needs three of the four.
98,845 jobs, one in five in health and social care
Jobs at workplaces in Exeter (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024). 1.7 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 (75,360). 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.
38% of Exeter’s commuters walk, cycle, or take the bus or train
How residents who travel to work get there, and how far they go (Census 2021, not counting those working mainly at home). Median journey 3.2 km; typical UK town 8.4 km.
73% of journeys to work are under 5 km (3 miles), against 45% across England’s towns, and 7% are 30 km or more. Exeter grades A+ for walkability, the best in Devon: the share of commuters who walk, cycle or take public transport, against UK towns.
ONS Census 2021, TS061 (method of travel) and TS058 (distance, straight line from home to workplace), output areas summed. Census day fell in the third lockdown, so fewer people travelled than usual.
Every working day, Exeter’s workforce grows by 30%
57,750 residents were in work at the 2021 Census; 75,360 people worked in Exeter. The middle of each bar is the same people: residents who work in the city or from home.
For every resident who leaves Exeter for work, about 3 people come in. 74% of residents who travel to a workplace stay in the city; in the typical UK town of 2,500+ it’s 14%.
Exeter’s workers come from Exmouth to Plymouth
The ten places that send the most workers into Exeter, and the ten where its residents most often work (Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
- Countryside4,231
- Exmouth2,261
- Newton Abbot969
- Cranbrook897
- Paignton821
- Dawlish725
- Tiverton705
- Plymouth700
- Crediton689
- Cullompton677
- Countryside1,876
- Cranbrook706
- Exmouth555
- Crediton325
- Paignton266
- Honiton233
- Plymouth223
- Topsham222
- Newton Abbot197
- Cullompton186
Exmouth, 8 miles away, sends 2,261 people, more than any other town; in all, 35% of the people who work in Exeter live outside it. Going the other way, Cranbrook is the biggest single destination (706).
Mean household income: £54,026 a year
Total household income before tax, mean, year to March 2023 (ONS small-area estimates). Higher than 55% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of Exeter averages £53,835.
The town figure is ONS’s neighbourhood (MSOA) estimates shared out by where the town’s residents live.
In Exeter, household incomes run from £43K to £67K from one neighbourhood to the next
Mean household income before tax in each of the 14 neighbourhoods (MSOAs) mostly inside the city: the highest is 1.6 times the lowest.
Each dot is a neighbourhood (MSOA, about 8,000 people) mostly inside Exeter; names from the House of Commons Library. ONS gives each a 95% range of roughly ±£7K to ±£10K, so neighbourhoods close together on the strip may not really differ.
Jobless claims in the Exeter council area have run below England and Wales every month since 2015
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).
Exeter’s rate was about 1.4% in 2019, peaked at 4.4% in May 2020 and has averaged 2.2% 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 Exeter, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Exeter’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.
One adult in five in Exeter is a full-time student
Everyone 16 and over, by what they were doing the week before the 2021 Census, and the jobs of those in work.
Compared with England’s towns, 20% are full-time students (against 7%), 18% are retired (against 21%) and 54% are in work (against 57%).
ONS Census 2021, tables TS066 (economic activity) and TS063 (occupation), output areas summed to the built-up area. England’s towns: everyone living in its built-up areas.
Exeter is 10th of 55 UK towns of 88,000 to 170,000 for jobs and income
Ordered by Jobs & income Grade: the top three, the towns either side of Exeter, and others in Devon.
| # | Town | People | Jobs per worker | Work in own town | Claimants | Income | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cambridge Cambridgeshire | 152,742 | 1.6 | 70% | 2.1% | £71K | A |
| 2 | Bath Somerset | 94,080 | 1.5 | 67% | 2.1% | £61K | A |
| 3 | Kingston upon Thames London | 166,333 | 0.9 | 39% | 3.3% | £91K | A− |
| … | |||||||
| 8 | Solihull West Midlands | 107,754 | 1.4 | 32% | 3% | £62K | B+ |
| 9 | Basingstoke Hampshire | 117,211 | 1 | 59% | 3.2% | £65K | B+ |
| 10 | Exeter Devon | 126,181 | 1.7 | 74% | 2.4% | £54K | B |
| 11 | Cheltenham Gloucestershire | 115,941 | 1.1 | 59% | 2.8% | £56K | B |
| 12 | Watford Hertfordshire | 131,336 | 1.1 | 41% | 4.4% | £64K | B |
| … | |||||||
| 55 | Hartlepool County Durham | 88,001 | 0.9 | 57% | 4.9% | £41K | D |
Jobs & income letters rank against every UK town of 1,000 or more; the order here is context only.
Work in the places around Exeter
Jobs based in each place, commuters who stay in their own town, and the claimant rate.
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exeter | 126,181 | 98,845 | 74% | 2.4% | B |
| West Clyst | 2,683 | 203 | 0% | 3% | B |
| Clyst Honiton | 1,030 | 392 | 0% | 3.1% | B+ |
| Clyst St Mary | 1,193 | 912 | 2% | 0.9% | A+ |
| Exminster | 4,388 | 1,272 | 8% | 2% | B |
| Topsham | 4,193 | 1,072 | 10% | 2.4% | B+ |
| Broadclyst | 1,549 | 547 | 3% | 1.5% | A− |
| Cranbrook | 4,936 | 5,296 | 7% | 2.6% | B |
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. Exeter 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 Exeter as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Exeter’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Exeter
Where do people in Exeter work?
At the 2021 Census, 74% of Exeter’s residents who travelled to work worked in the city itself; the most common other places were Cranbrook (706), Exmouth (555) and Crediton (325). 43% 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 Exeter?
26,291 people who lived elsewhere worked in Exeter at the 2021 Census, 35% of its 75,360 workers. The most came from Exmouth (2,261), Newton Abbot (969) and Cranbrook (897). 8,542 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Exeter?
About 98,850 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Exeter in 2024, on ONS’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 1.7 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town. The biggest kinds of work are hospitals and health care (about 15,150), education (about 12,800) and public administration and defence (about 8,550).
Is Exeter a good place to find work?
Exeter earns a B for jobs and income, better than 64% of UK towns on household income, the claimant rate, employment deprivation and access to jobs together. Mean household income £54,026; 2.4% of 16 to 64s claim unemployment benefits.
How do people in Exeter get to work?
59% of commuters go by car or van, 23% walk, 7% cycle and 8% take the bus or train; 73% travel under 5 km. Census 2021, taken during lockdown.
What is the average household income in Exeter?
Mean household income before tax was £54,026 in the year to March 2023 (ONS), against £52,385 in the typical UK town. By neighbourhood it runs from £42,918 in Central Exeter to £66,829 in Pennsylvania & University.
How does Exeter compare with Plymouth for jobs?
Exeter has 1.7 jobs per working resident against Plymouth’s 1, a 2.4% claimant rate against 3.6%, and mean household income of £54,026 against £48,927.
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.