Photo: Adrian Cable · CC BY-SA 2.0Sproughton draws workers in: 3.8 jobs for every resident in work
36% of commuters travel less than 3 miles. Every working day brings 921 commuters in, and the village fills up. There is no Jobs & income Grade for Sproughton.
What Sproughton’s work numbers say
Longer journeys to work
Against 45% across England’s towns. 5% of commuters walk to work (11% across England’s towns). Getting to work ↓
Fewer benefit claims than most towns
The typical UK town: 2.7%; England and Wales: 4% so far in 2026. Claims across the Babergh 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.
1,508 jobs, one in six in professional, scientific and technical
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 (1,119). 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 Sproughton (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
How Sproughton gets to work: 8% without a car
Median journey 8.3 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 Babergh council area have run below England and Wales every month since 2015
Babergh’s rate was about 1.7% in 2019, peaked at 5% in May 2020 and has averaged 2.5% 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 Babergh, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Sproughton’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, 1,119 people work in Sproughton, 2.8 times its working residents
396 residents were in work at the 2021 Census; 1,119 people worked in Sproughton.
For every resident who leaves Sproughton for work, about 5 people come in. 6% of residents who travel to a workplace stay in the village; 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 village or from home.
Most of Sproughton’s incomers live in Ipswich and the places around
- Ipswich506
- Countryside55
- Felixstowe42
- Stowmarket32
- Kesgrave25
- Colchester22
- Claydon17
- Needham Market13
- Great Blakenham8
- Lowestoft8
- Ipswich80
- Countryside24
- Felixstowe13
- Stowmarket12
- Colchester6
- Bramford6
- Sudbury5
- Claydon5
- Woodbridge4
- Bury St Edmunds4
Ipswich, 3 miles away, sends 506 people, more than any other town; in all, 82% of the people who work in Sproughton live outside it. Going the other way, Ipswich is the biggest single destination (80).
The ten places that send the most workers into Sproughton, 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 Sproughton has £57,408 a year
Higher than 64% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of Babergh averages £56,308.
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).
A retired town: 32% of adults in Sproughton
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.
Sproughton and its neighbours: work and income
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sproughton | 803 | 1,508 | 6% | 1.9% | — |
| Bramford | 2,335 | 832 | 6% | 2.5% | B− |
| Ipswich | 151,566 | 77,919 | 62% | 4.2% | C+ |
| Claydon | 3,140 | 1,436 | 8% | 1.7% | A− |
| Great Blakenham | 2,188 | 2,389 | 5% | 1.6% | A |
| Elmsett | 1,001 | 246 | 8% | 1.3% | B+ |
| Capel St Mary | 2,992 | 529 | 7% | 1.5% | A− |
| Hadleigh | 8,638 | 3,690 | 35% | 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. Sproughton 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 Babergh as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Sproughton’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Sproughton
Where do people in Sproughton work?
At the 2021 Census, 6% of Sproughton’s residents who travelled to work worked in the village itself; the most common other places were Ipswich (80), Felixstowe (13) and Stowmarket (12). 47% 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 Sproughton?
921 people who lived elsewhere worked in Sproughton at the 2021 Census, 82% of its 1,119 workers. The most came from Ipswich (506), Felixstowe (42) and Stowmarket (32). 198 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Sproughton?
About 1,510 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Sproughton in 2024, on ONS’s Business Register and Employment Survey: 3.8 for every resident in work, against 0.7 in the typical UK town. The biggest kinds of work are shops (about 190), wholesale (about 100) and legal and accounting (about 100).
How do people in Sproughton get to work?
91% of commuters go by car or van, 5% walk, 2% cycle and 1% take the bus or train; 36% travel under 5 km. Census 2021, taken during lockdown.
What is the average household income in Sproughton?
Mean household income before tax was £57,408 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.