Photo: Sunil060902 · CC BY-SA 3.0Households in Ebbsfleet Valley have higher incomes than those in 95% of UK towns
The claimant rate is 4.5% of working-age residents, against 2.7% in the typical UK town. UK towns are the yardstick, and by them Ebbsfleet Valley earns A on jobs and income, #9 of 87 in Kent. 702 residents travel out to work and 124 people come in.
Ebbsfleet Valley and work: the main findings
Longer journeys to work
Against 45% across England’s towns. 3% 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. Claims across the Dartford 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.
Ebbsfleet Valley earns A for jobs and income
Its four measures together rank it better than 88% of UK towns: #9 of 87 in Kent.
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.
How Ebbsfleet Valley gets to work: 23% without a car
Median journey 16.8 km; typical UK town 8.4 km.
Ebbsfleet Valley 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 Dartford council area have run below England and Wales every month since 2015
Dartford’s rate was about 1.8% in 2019, peaked at 5.6% in May 2020 and has averaged 3.2% 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 Dartford, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Ebbsfleet Valley’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).
Each working day, more people leave Ebbsfleet Valley for work than come in
1,786 residents were in work at the 2021 Census; 1,205 people worked in Ebbsfleet Valley.
For every person who comes in to work, about 6 residents travel out. 1% 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.
Ebbsfleet Valley’s commuters work from Dartford to Camden
- Dartford104
- Bexley64
- Greenwich43
- Bromley33
- Westminster32
- Countryside29
- Northfleet27
- Camden27
- City of London24
- Stone23
99% of residents who travel to a workplace work outside Ebbsfleet Valley; Dartford takes the most (104). Coming the other way, Northfleet sends the most (14).
The ten places that send the most workers into Ebbsfleet Valley, and the ten where its residents most often work (Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
The average household in Ebbsfleet Valley has £74,911 a year
Higher than 94% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of Dartford averages £65,298.
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).
In Ebbsfleet Valley, 84% of adults are in work
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.
111th of 836: where Ebbsfleet Valley ranks among UK towns of 2,000 to 4,000
| # | Town | People | Jobs per worker | Work in own town | Claimants | Income | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pannal North Yorkshire | 2,530 | 0.8 | 4% | 0.6% | £71K | A+ |
| 2 | Charvil Berkshire | 3,158 | 0.4 | 2% | 1.4% | £83K | A+ |
| 3 | Barnt Green Worcestershire | 3,821 | 0.7 | 4% | 1.2% | £77K | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 50 | Istead Rise Kent | 3,398 | 0.3 | 2% | 1.3% | £65K | A |
| … | |||||||
| 109 | Ashington West Sussex | 2,688 | 0.8 | 7% | 1.5% | £72K | A |
| 110 | Chigwell Row Essex | 2,115 | 0.5 | 3% | 2.2% | £74K | A |
| 111 | Ebbsfleet Valley Kent | 2,989 | 0 | 1% | 4.5% | £75K | A |
| 112 | Rudgwick West Sussex | 2,145 | 0.8 | 14% | 1.3% | £69K | A |
| 113 | Wheelock Cheshire | 2,155 | 0.3 | 1% | 1.5% | £62K | A |
| … | |||||||
| 115 | Dunton Green Kent | 3,241 | 0.3 | 2% | 2.4% | £67K | A |
| … | |||||||
| 125 | Ightham Kent | 2,037 | 0.7 | 2% | 1.6% | £70K | A |
| … | |||||||
| 836 | Maerdy Mid Glamorgan | 2,843 | 0.4 | 11% | 5.7% | £38K | 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 Ebbsfleet Valley, and others in Kent.
Work next door to Ebbsfleet Valley
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ebbsfleet Valley | 2,989 | — | 1% | 4.5% | A |
| Swanscombe | 15,462 | 3,336 | 7% | 3.9% | B |
| Bean | 1,633 | 700 | 2% | 2.4% | B |
| Northfleet | 29,892 | 10,744 | 17% | 5% | C+ |
| Stone | 6,438 | 15,046 | 7% | 3% | B+ |
| Darenth | 2,588 | 376 | 1% | 3.6% | C+ |
| Istead Rise | 3,398 | 500 | 2% | 1.3% | A |
| Tilbury | 14,187 | 11,770 | 23% | 7.6% | 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. Ebbsfleet Valley 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 Dartford as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Ebbsfleet Valley’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Ebbsfleet Valley
Where do people in Ebbsfleet Valley work?
At the 2021 Census, 1% of Ebbsfleet Valley’s residents who travelled to work worked in the town itself; the most common other places were Dartford (104), Bexley (64) and Greenwich (43). 60% 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 Ebbsfleet Valley?
124 people who lived elsewhere worked in Ebbsfleet Valley at the 2021 Census, 10% of its 1,205 workers. The most came from Northfleet (14), Longfield, New Ash Green and Hartley (11) and Gravesend (8). 702 residents travelled out the other way.
Is Ebbsfleet Valley a good place to find work?
Ebbsfleet Valley earns an A for jobs and income, better than 88% of UK towns on household income, the claimant rate, employment deprivation and access to jobs together. Mean household income £74,911; 4.5% of 16 to 64s claim unemployment benefits.
How do people in Ebbsfleet Valley get to work?
73% of commuters go by car or van, 3% walk, 1% cycle and 19% take the bus or train; 23% travel under 5 km. Census 2021, taken during lockdown.
What is the average household income in Ebbsfleet Valley?
Mean household income before tax was £74,911 in the year to March 2023 (ONS), against £52,385 in the typical UK town.
How does Ebbsfleet Valley compare with Maidstone for jobs?
Ebbsfleet Valley has 0 jobs per working resident against Maidstone’s 1.1, a 4.5% claimant rate against 4.1%, and mean household income of £74,911 against £58,325.
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.