Remains of Abbey of Ss Mary Barbara and Edmund · Photo: JohnArmagh · CC BY-SA 3.0Few UK towns have as few people on jobless benefits as Marham
Every working day 1,978 people travel in to work, so the town fills up. 0.7% of working-age residents claim jobless benefits, against 2.7% in the typical UK town. UK towns are the yardstick, and by them Marham earns B+ on jobs and income.
Work in Marham: the figures worth knowing
Fewer jobs than working residents
1,073 jobs are based in Marham for 1,555 working residents; the typical UK town has 0.7 jobs per resident in work. Shops, food manufacturing and restaurants, cafés and pubs make up 40% of them. Jobs based here ↓
Fewer benefit claims than most towns
The typical UK town: 2.7%; England and Wales: 4% so far in 2026. Claims across the King's Lynn and West Norfolk 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.
Marham earns B+ for jobs and income
Its four measures together rank it better than 73% of UK towns.
Its strongest measure is the claimant rate; its weakest, getting to jobs without a car.
Marham is a military garrison town: most residents serve or work for the armed forces and live in service housing, so it keeps its grades but isn’t ranked against other towns.
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.
Jobless claims in the King's Lynn and West Norfolk council area have run below England and Wales every month since 2015
King's Lynn and West Norfolk’s rate was about 1.7% in 2019, peaked at 5.3% in May 2020 and has averaged 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 King's Lynn and West Norfolk, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Marham’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).
On a working day Marham gains 95% in workers
1,555 residents were in work at the 2021 Census; 3,026 people worked in Marham.
For every resident who leaves Marham for work, about 4 people come in. 46% 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.
Marham’s workers come from King's Lynn to Albrighton
- Countryside243
- King's Lynn96
- Downham Market87
- Swaffham76
- Albrighton66
- Dereham51
- Norwich47
- Watton42
- Thetford34
- Narborough27
- King's Lynn205
- Countryside73
- Downham Market29
- Swaffham24
- Norwich20
- Wisbech7
- West Winch7
- Ely6
- Shouldham6
- Hunstanton6
King's Lynn, 9 miles away, sends 96 people, more than any other town; in all, 65% of the people who work in Marham live outside it. Going the other way, King's Lynn is the biggest single destination (205).
The ten places that send the most workers into Marham, and the ten where its residents most often work (Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
1,073 jobs, one in six in manufacturing
0.7 for every working resident, the same as the typical UK town.
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 (3,026). 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 Marham (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
How much households earn in Marham: £56,764
Higher than 63% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of King's Lynn and West Norfolk averages £47,345.
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).
One way or another, 29% of Marham’s commuters skip the car
Median journey 9.5 km; typical UK town 8.4 km.
47% of journeys to work are under 5 km (3 miles), against 45% across England’s towns, and 12% are 30 km or more. Marham 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).
75% of adults in Marham 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.
The work picture around Marham
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marham | 2,608 | 1,073 | 46% | 0.7% | B+ |
| Narborough | 1,362 | 140 | 3% | 3.4% | D |
| Gayton | 1,522 | 256 | 5% | 2.5% | C− |
| Stoke Ferry | 1,191 | 218 | 9% | 2% | C |
| Watlington | 2,593 | 225 | 3% | 1.9% | C+ |
| Swaffham | 8,434 | 2,906 | 29% | 3.5% | D |
| West Winch | 2,828 | 1,201 | 6% | 1.6% | B |
| Downham Market | 11,349 | 3,120 | 22% | 2.9% | 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. Marham 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 King's Lynn and West Norfolk as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Marham’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Marham
Where do people in Marham work?
At the 2021 Census, 46% of Marham’s residents who travelled to work worked in the town itself; the most common other places were King's Lynn (205), Downham Market (29) and Swaffham (24). 41% 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 Marham?
1,978 people who lived elsewhere worked in Marham at the 2021 Census, 65% of its 3,026 workers. The most came from King's Lynn (96), Downham Market (87) and Swaffham (76). 499 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Marham?
About 1,070 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Marham in 2024, on ONS’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 0.7 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town. The biggest kinds of work are shops (about 290), food manufacturing (about 190) and restaurants, cafés and pubs (about 190).
Is Marham a good place to find work?
Marham earns a B+ for jobs and income, better than 73% of UK towns on household income, the claimant rate, employment deprivation and access to jobs together. Mean household income £56,764; 0.7% of 16 to 64s claim unemployment benefits.
How do people in Marham get to work?
68% of commuters go by car or van, 21% walk, 8% cycle and 1% take the bus or train; 47% travel under 5 km. Census 2021, taken during lockdown.
What is the average household income in Marham?
Mean household income before tax was £56,764 in the year to March 2023 (ONS), against £52,385 in the typical UK town.
How does Marham compare with Norwich for jobs?
Marham has 0.7 jobs per working resident against Norwich’s 1.3, a 0.7% claimant rate against 3.8%, and mean household income of £56,764 against £49,951.
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.