Who works in Facilities?
As with the wider creative media industry, the facilities sector has a large proportion of it's workforce in the south, with 78% of the industry operating in London, the East of England and the South East regions. This figure is 45% when looking at the figures for London alone.
A large proportion of employees and freelancers across the facilities sector are educated to a high level: 59% of the workforce are graduates. However, due to the highly specialised roles within broadcast engineering and special physical effects, ongoing development is vital; 74% and 76% of the workforce respectively cited a need for regular training in recent Skillset research.
It is a hard working sector for freelancers, with 1 in 10 freelancers working on average more than 70 hours per week within the sub-sectors of studios, equipment hire and special physical effects. Special physical effects is heavily reliant on freelancers and 69% of the workforce is employed on a freelance basis.
A freelancer working in post production can expect to be employed for a larger proportion of the year than the rest of the creative media sectors, with the average being 238 days employed.
According to Skillset research post production also has one of the lowest proportions of women in the workforce at 21% (woman make up 46% in the UK industry overall).
People from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds make up 5% or less of the workforce in special physical effects, studio and equipment hire. Which is also disproportionate, given that so many companies are based in London, South and East.
For more information on our research work, please visit Skillset's Research pages.