Photo: Richard Webb · CC BY-SA 2.0A place people come to for work: Sheet has 4 jobs per resident in work
On a working day the village fills up: 257 people commute in. The Jobs & income Grade leaves out Sheet. Jobless benefits go to 2.9% of working-age residents; the typical UK town’s rate is 2.7%.
The work figures that set Sheet apart
A local job centre
354 jobs are based in Sheet for 88 working residents; the typical UK town has 0.7 jobs per resident in work. Shops, restaurants, cafés and pubs and wholesale make up 34% of them. Jobs based here ↓
Benefit claims close to the typical town
The typical UK town: 2.7%; England and Wales: 4% so far in 2026. Claims across the Shropshire 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.
354 jobs, one in six in retail
4 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 (296). 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 Sheet (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
Most of Sheet’s incomers live in Ludlow and the places around
- Ludlow95
- Countryside58
- Tenbury Wells11
- Knighton9
- Kidderminster7
- Telford7
- Cleobury Mortimer6
- Craven Arms6
- Shrewsbury5
- Leominster4
Ludlow, 1 miles away, sends 95 people, more than any other town; in all, 87% of the people who work in Sheet live outside it. Going the other way, Ludlow is the biggest single destination (17).
The ten places that send the most workers into Sheet, and the ten where its residents most often work (Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
An average of £41,342 a year per household in Sheet
Higher than 11% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of Shropshire averages £50,247.
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).
13% of people travelling to work from Sheet walk, cycle or take the bus or train
Median journey 10 km; typical UK town 8.4 km.
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 Shropshire council area have run below England and Wales every month since 2015
Shropshire’s rate was about 1.9% in 2019, peaked at 4.8% in May 2020 and has averaged 2.4% 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 Shropshire, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Sheet’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).
The work picture around Sheet
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sheet | 175 | 354 | — | 2.9% | — |
| Ludlow | 10,037 | 3,985 | 42% | 3.3% | D |
| Tenbury Wells | 3,936 | 1,453 | 41% | 3.7% | D |
| Craven Arms | 2,563 | 1,302 | 30% | 3.2% | D |
| Cleobury Mortimer | 2,963 | 1,096 | 20% | 2.4% | C− |
| Leominster | 11,206 | 3,910 | 38% | 4.7% | D− |
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. Sheet 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 Shropshire as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Sheet’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Sheet
How many people commute into Sheet?
257 people who lived elsewhere worked in Sheet at the 2021 Census, 87% of its 296 workers. The most came from Ludlow (95), Tenbury Wells (11) and Knighton (9). 48 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Sheet?
About 350 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Sheet in 2024, on ONS’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 4 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town. The biggest kinds of work are shops (about 50), restaurants, cafés and pubs (about 30) and wholesale (about 20).
How do people in Sheet get to work?
83% of commuters go by car or van, 10% walk, 3% cycle and 0% take the bus or train. Census 2021, taken during lockdown.
What is the average household income in Sheet?
Mean household income before tax was £41,342 in the year to March 2023 (ONS), against £52,385 in the typical UK town.
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.