When the Mayor was re-elected in May 2021, he stated that “protecting, preserving and helping to create jobs will be my economic priority”. GLA Economics have therefore produced a report to monitor the employment impact of programmes and initiatives over the mayoral term.

Estimates suggest that over the mayoral term (since 2016), the mayor has created 332,100 gross jobs. This figure includes 273,200 (gross) jobs created or supported by the GLA group since 2016. In addition, 47,600 people have been recorded as being supported into work, 1,700 jobs safeguarded, and 9,500 apprenticeships have been created with support from mayoral programmes and policies.

The figures provided are an estimate of the jobs created through GLA Group-led activity from the start of the Mayoral term (2016) using the most up-to-date available data (as of August 2022)[1]. References to ‘jobs created’ throughout this report refer to all jobs created, supported, safeguarded, people supported into work, and apprenticeships.

The results have also been estimated by policy area, with housing creating the largest number of jobs. Estimates from the National Housing Federation suggest that each new home built is associated with the creation of at least 1.2 direct jobs lasting one year[2], which translates to over 140,100 jobs created due to the Affordable Housing Programme.

The culture and creative industries created the second largest number of jobs (48,200). London & Partners, through their international campaigns and work on foreign direct investment also created a significant number of jobs between 2016 and 2022 (in total, over 46,300). Finally, the European Programmes Management unit (which comprises the ERDF & ESF programmes), created over 35,400 jobs during the mayoral term.

Looking at London’s overall workforce, there were nearly 600,000 more workforce jobs[3]  in the six and a half years since May 2016. However, these estimates cannot be directly compared for two reasons. First, the definitions used to monitor total workforce jobs created in London are not aligned with the definitions used to monitor jobs created due to Mayoral initiatives. Second, the gross jobs reported in this report have not been adjusted for additionality (i.e., how many jobs would have been created in the absence of the mayoral intervention).

Mayoral initiatives play a significant part in creating and supporting employment in the city, within sectors that are influential to improving the social welfare of Londoners (such as regeneration and employment support).

Other economic and social benefits from these Mayoral initiatives are beyond the scope of this paper- including the quality of jobs created, their effect on the welfare of employees (and their households), and the focus on creating ‘green’ jobs to help make London a net-zero carbon city by 2030.

This analysis represents an initial step towards improving our approach to monitoring job creation resulting from Mayoral initiatives. The GLA will develop an internal report to identify possible improvements to existing data collection measures and facilitate the job monitoring process in the future. This process will aim to better capture the jobs created from areas such as TfL, which is currently underrepresented in the final estimate. 

Download the full report.

The data available to download shows gross jobs by job type, programme and policy area.

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[1] For some programmes, more recent data is available.

[2] Employment data is not monitored for housing programmes. Job creation from the AHP is estimated by multiplying the number of housing starts by a conservative estimate from the NHF of 1.2 direct jobs per house built. The Housing Strategy (2011) provides an estimate of up to 2 jobs per house built. Other analysis from the Home Builder Federation has found that “the scale of employment supported by house building is equivalent to between 2.4 and 3.1 direct, indirect and induced jobs per new permanent dwelling built”. This means the jobs figure for the Affordable Housing programme could be higher.

[3] Workforce Jobs (WFJ) is a quarterly measure of the number of jobs and is the preferred measure of the change in jobs by industry. WFJ is the sum of employee jobs measured primarily by employer surveys, self-employment jobs from the Labour Force Survey, and government-supported trainees and Her Majesty’s Forces from administrative sources.