Ethnic group, national identity, language, and religion: Census 2021 in England and Wales

Office for National Statistics sent this bulletin at 29-11-2022 10:29 AM GMT

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Ethnic group, national identity, language, and religion: Census 2021 in England and Wales

29 November 2022

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published a suite of Census 2021 bulletins, which give insight into the cultural identity of people in England and Wales in March last year. These cover Ethnic group, national identity, language, and religion.

This includes univariate data (one variable Today only) down to Output Area (OA) level, where possible.  

This gives the latest information about:  

  • which ethnic groups people identified with  
  • the main language people use  
  • how well people, who do not have English as a main language, could speak English 
  • how people describe their national identity 
  • which religious groups people identified with  

Today’s data, as well as the recent statistics on UK armed forces veterans, has been updated on Census maps. 

Detailed information about variables, definitions, and classifications to help when using Census 2021 data can be found in the Census 2021 dictionary.  

We published a blog on 25 November in which we look at how data on the myriad ways people chose to identify are being turned into meaningful statistics How am I represented in Census 2021 data?  

We have also launched our Application Programming Interface (API) for topic summaries, enabling users to filter datasets via geography. This allows users to request a list of available geographies for each population type:  Application Programming Interface.  

The remaining topic summaries will be published in a rolling programme throughout December and early 2023, followed by multivariate data and analysis.  

The next Census 2021 release will be published on 6 December: Welsh Language. This will be followed by Labour Market and Travel to Work on 8 December. 

The provisional publication dates for the remaining topic summaries can be found on the ONS release calendar.
Rich Pereira

Rich Pereira is head of Demography. You can follow Rich on Twitter for the latest in population statistics news: @RichPereira_ONS.

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