Photo: Colin Vosper · CC BY-SA 2.0Bournemouth has more people on jobless benefits than 90% of UK towns
Measured against other UK towns, jobs and pay in Bournemouth rate C+, #17 of 30 in Dorset. 4.1% of working-age residents claim jobless benefits, against 2.7% in the typical UK town. The working day takes 25,514 residents elsewhere and brings 15,839 people in.
Bournemouth and work: the main findings
More jobs than the typical town
85,616 jobs are based in Bournemouth for 92,401 working residents; the typical UK town has 0.7 jobs per resident in work. Hospitals and health care, shops and restaurants, cafés and pubs make up 30% of them. Jobs based here ↓
Short journeys to work
Against 45% across England’s towns. 13% of commuters walk to work (11% across England’s towns). Getting to work ↓
More benefit claims than most towns
The typical UK town: 2.7%; England and Wales: 4% so far in 2026. Benefits over time ↓
Written from the data on this page: ONS Census 2021 and BRES, DWP claimant counts via Nomis, and ONS household income.
The Jobs & income grade for Bournemouth: C+
Better than 36% of UK towns once its four measures are combined: #17 of 30 in Dorset.
Its strongest measure is getting to jobs without a car; its weakest, the claimant rate.
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.
85,616 jobs, one in five in health and social care
0.9 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 (82,470). 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 Bournemouth (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
Walking, cycling, the bus or the train: 27% of Bournemouth’s commuters
Median journey 4.6 km; typical UK town 8.4 km.
54% of journeys to work are under 5 km (3 miles), against 45% across England’s towns, and 7% are 30 km or more. Bournemouth grades A for walkability: 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.
How residents who travel to work get there, and how far they go (Census 2021, not counting those working mainly at home).
Jobless claims in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council area are below England and Wales’ rate
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole’s rate was about 2.3% in 2019, peaked at 6.5% in May 2020 and has averaged 3.4% 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Bournemouth’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).
Bournemouth is quieter on a working day than at night
92,401 residents were in work at the 2021 Census; 82,470 people worked in Bournemouth.
For every person who comes in to work, about 2 residents travel out. 49% of residents who travel to a workplace stay in the city; 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 city or from home.
Bournemouth’s commuters work from Poole to Christchurch
- Poole6,560
- Christchurch2,602
- Countryside704
- Ferndown405
- Wimborne Minster365
- Bearwood323
- Verwood321
- Ringwood259
- West Moors251
- Corfe Mullen211
- Poole11,013
- Countryside3,344
- Christchurch3,124
- Ringwood660
- New Milton524
- Southampton509
- Ferndown493
- Wimborne Minster464
- West Moors268
- Verwood242
51% of residents who travel to a workplace work outside Bournemouth; Poole takes the most (11,013). Coming the other way, Poole sends the most (6,560).
The ten places that send the most workers into Bournemouth, and the ten where its residents most often work (Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
Bournemouth households bring in £49,915 a year on average
Higher than 41% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole averages £51,831.
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).
£38K to £66K: incomes from one part of Bournemouth to another
Mean household income before tax in each of the 23 neighbourhoods (MSOAs) mostly inside the city: the highest is 1.7 times the lowest.
Each dot is a neighbourhood (MSOA, about 8,000 people) mostly inside Bournemouth; 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.
In work, studying or retired: 56% of Bournemouth’s adults work
Compared with England’s towns, 11% are full-time students (against 7%).
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.
Everyone 16 and over, by what they were doing the week before the 2021 Census, and the jobs of those in work.
32nd of 43: where Bournemouth ranks among UK towns of 138,000 to 265,000
| # | 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 | Richmond upon Thames London | 192,888 | 0.9 | 35% | 2.5% | £102K | A |
| 3 | Oxford Oxfordshire | 170,799 | 1.7 | 76% | 2.6% | £65K | A |
| … | |||||||
| 19 | Poole Dorset | 141,009 | 1.2 | 58% | 3% | £54K | B− |
| … | |||||||
| 30 | Ipswich Suffolk | 151,566 | 1.1 | 62% | 4.2% | £54K | C+ |
| 31 | Norwich Norfolk | 200,744 | 1.3 | 61% | 3.8% | £50K | C+ |
| 32 | Bournemouth Dorset | 196,453 | 0.9 | 49% | 4.1% | £50K | C+ |
| 33 | Luton Bedfordshire | 233,524 | 1.2 | 57% | 6.8% | £53K | C+ |
| 34 | Peterborough Cambridgeshire | 190,592 | 1.3 | 72% | 5.9% | £52K | C |
| … | |||||||
| 43 | Blackpool Lancashire | 149,087 | 1.1 | 68% | 5.8% | £36K | D |
Jobs & income letters rank against every UK town of 1,000 or more; the order here is context only.
Ordered by Jobs & income Grade: the top three, the towns either side of Bournemouth, and others in Dorset.
How the places next to Bournemouth compare on work
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bournemouth | 196,453 | 85,616 | 49% | 4.1% | C+ |
| West Parley | 3,665 | 829 | 4% | 1.6% | A |
| Bearwood | 4,134 | 480 | 2% | 2.4% | B |
| Poole | 141,009 | 80,891 | 58% | 3% | B− |
| Ferndown | 13,267 | 4,931 | 11% | 1.9% | B+ |
| Christchurch | 48,973 | 15,732 | 32% | 2.5% | B− |
| Merley | 5,489 | 1,286 | 7% | 1.6% | A |
| West Moors | 10,432 | 2,173 | 11% | 2.7% | C |
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. Bournemouth 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 Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Bournemouth’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Bournemouth
Where do people in Bournemouth work?
At the 2021 Census, 49% of Bournemouth’s residents who travelled to work worked in the city itself; the most common other places were Poole (11,013), Christchurch (3,124) and Ringwood (660). 45% 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 Bournemouth?
15,839 people who lived elsewhere worked in Bournemouth at the 2021 Census, 19% of its 82,470 workers. The most came from Poole (6,560), Christchurch (2,602) and Ferndown (405). 25,514 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Bournemouth?
About 85,600 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Bournemouth in 2024, on ONS’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 0.9 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town. The biggest kinds of work are hospitals and health care (about 9,720), shops (about 8,080) and restaurants, cafés and pubs (about 7,570).
Is Bournemouth a good place to find work?
Bournemouth earns a C+ for jobs and income, better than 36% of UK towns on household income, the claimant rate, employment deprivation and access to jobs together. Mean household income £49,915; 4.1% of 16 to 64s claim unemployment benefits.
How do people in Bournemouth get to work?
69% of commuters go by car or van, 13% walk, 5% cycle and 9% take the bus or train; 54% travel under 5 km. Census 2021, taken during lockdown.
What is the average household income in Bournemouth?
Mean household income before tax was £49,915 in the year to March 2023 (ONS), against £52,385 in the typical UK town. By neighbourhood it runs from £37,737 in Boscombe West to £65,602 in Moordown.
How does Bournemouth compare with Poole for jobs?
Bournemouth has 0.9 jobs per working resident against Poole’s 1.2, a 4.1% claimant rate against 3%, and mean household income of £49,915 against £54,205.
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.