The UK's film industry can be broken down into four principal sub-sectors: production, facilities, distribution and exhibition.

It is an industry made up of a small number of large companies and a very large number of smaller companies which have an occupationally diverse and highly skilled workforce characterised by very high levels of freelancers working in the production sector.

Data from Skillset's 2006 Employment Census and the Joint Skillset/UK Film Council Feature Film Production Workforce Survey 2008 show that the UK film industry has a total workforce of around 27,800 people. The vast majority (62%) are in exhibition, with a third (34%) in production and the remaining 4% in distribution.

The film industry also draws in those employed in the facilities sector which serves elements of the wider creative media industries as well.

The film industry is small in comparison with the rest of the audio visual workforce, making up 5% of the total.

The working arrangement of the film workforce varies considerably by sub-sector; 91% of film production crew are freelancers and just 9% are employees, whereas all of cinema exhibition and film distribution are employees.

Overall representation of women in film stands at around 43% which is slightly greater than representation across the rest of the creative media industries (42%).

Around 9% of people in the film industry are from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) background. In cinema exhibition this is the case for 12% of the workforce, in distribution and production this is the case for 4% and 5% respectively.

Only 2% of workers in these areas define themselves as disabled, which is lower than the rest of the audio visual workforce and the entire economy - both of which have 5% of workers as defining themselves as disabled.

It is increasingly common for those working in the film industry to work across the wider creative media industries as well. On average, during a year long period spanning 2005 and 2006, film production crew spent 23 weeks working on feature films and 11 weeks on another type of production e.g. television (51% of crew) and commercials (34% of crew). Training is important to enable them to do just that. We support freelancers with both our Film and TV funds.

In addition it is common among this segment of the economy to spend time unemployed and seeking work and three quarters of the workforce had experienced this in the same twelve months.

For more information on our research work, please visit Skillset's research pages