Photo: Pip Rolls · CC BY-SA 2.0How Effingham works: jobs, income and commuting
0.8% of people of working age are on jobless benefits, where the typical UK town’s rate is 2.7%. Each working day 32 residents head out to work, and 9 people come the other way. No Jobs & income Grade is given to Effingham.
What Effingham’s work numbers say
Fewer jobs than working residents
83 jobs are based in Effingham for 119 working residents; the typical UK town has 0.7 jobs per resident in work. Education, shops and hotels and holiday accommodation make up 37% 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 Guildford 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.
Jobless claims in the Guildford council area have run below England and Wales every month since 2015
Guildford’s rate was about 0.9% in 2019, peaked at 3.5% in August 2020 and has averaged 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 Guildford, which Nomis publishes monthly; the figures above the line are for Effingham’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).
More go out than come in: the working day in Effingham
119 residents were in work at the 2021 Census; 96 people worked in Effingham.
For every person who comes in to work, about 4 residents travel out.
The middle of each bar is the same people: residents who work in the village or from home.
Most of Effingham’s commuters who leave work in Guildford and the places around
- Guildford6
- City of London3
- Cobham2
- Hounslow2
- Countryside2
- Cranleigh1
- Alton1
- Forest Green1
- Aldershot1
- West Horsley1
100% of residents who travel to a workplace work outside Effingham; Guildford takes the most (6).
The ten places that send the most workers into Effingham, and the ten where its residents most often work (Census 2021, by home and workplace). Line width is the number of people.
83 jobs, 21% in education
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 (96). 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 Effingham (employees and working owners, ONS Business Register and Employment Survey 2024).
Effingham households bring in £89,178 a year on average
Higher than 100% of UK towns of 2,500+; the typical town is £52,385. The whole council area of Guildford averages £72,042.
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 work, studying or retired: 58% of Effingham’s adults work
Compared with England’s towns, 0% are long-term sick or disabled (against 4%).
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.
Jobs near Effingham: the places around it
| Town | People | Jobs | Work in own town | Claimants | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Effingham | 240 | 83 | — | 0.8% | — |
| East Horsley | 5,843 | 1,521 | 9% | 1.5% | A+ |
| Great Bookham and Fetcham | 21,655 | 4,922 | 19% | 1.3% | A+ |
| West Horsley | 1,378 | 600 | 6% | 1% | A+ |
| Cobham | 17,505 | 7,706 | 21% | 1.8% | A+ |
| Leatherhead | 11,482 | 16,845 | 21% | 3.1% | B |
| Ripley | 1,714 | 1,048 | 11% | 2.5% | A− |
| West Clandon | 1,233 | 317 | 4% | 1.6% | A+ |
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. Effingham 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 Guildford as a whole; the claimant rate elsewhere on this page is Effingham’s built-up area, from small areas.
Questions about work in Effingham
How many people commute into Effingham?
9 people who lived elsewhere worked in Effingham at the 2021 Census, 9% of its 96 workers. The most came from Great Bookham and Fetcham (3), Horsham (2) and Southampton (1). 32 residents travelled out the other way.
How many jobs are there in Effingham?
About 80 jobs (employees and working owners) were based in Effingham 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.
What is the average household income in Effingham?
Mean household income before tax was £89,178 in the year to March 2023 (ONS), against £52,385 in the typical UK town.
How does Effingham compare with Guildford for jobs?
Effingham has 0.7 jobs per working resident against Guildford’s 1.6, a 0.8% claimant rate against 2.2%, and mean household income of £89,178 against £69,856.
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.