Thursday 27 January 2022
The results of the March 2021 electronic census have today been published on gov.gg/population.
The report includes a snapshot of the population by age, gender, parish, school catchment, housing tenure and economic status. It also contains information on immigration, emigration, births and deaths over the past five years and a longitudinal analysis of people that immigrated here five years ago. Additionally, it includes more recent information on employment and unemployment.
Amongst other key points, the report shows that during the year ending 31st March 2021 there were increases of 0.2% (74 people) in the 16 to 64 age group, 2.3% (259 people) in the 65 to 84 age group and 2.6% (45 people) in the 85 and over age group. The number of people in the 0 to 15 age category decreased by 0.1% (13 people) over the year ending 31st March 2021.
The UK and Jersey will begin publishing their traditional 2021 census results, providing similar information, later this year. By changing to an administrative census approach, the States of Guernsey have saved over £1.9million since 2006 as well as having more frequent and timely demographic information to inform policies and projections.
Information on the history of the census in Guernsey and historic statistics are available from gov.gg/census, which includes information for anyone wanting to access past census records (including the recently released 1921 records).
Helen Walton, Head of the States Data & Analysis Service, said:
"The first census of Guernsey was undertaken in 1821 as part of the census of Britain and repeated every 10 years (except during the occupation in 1941) until 150 years later in 1971, when Guernsey undertook its own census for the first time. The first ever computer in Guernsey was brought in to speed up the analysis of the 1971 census data, which was collected via paper forms and a big team of enumerators. 50 years later, the data collection and cleaning process is fully digitalised and almost entirely automated, which means we can publish demographic statistics quarterly even during a pandemic and while working from home. The records being generated for future research purposes are digital from the offset too, so won't need converting from paper into digital format further down the line.
"Now that the Rolling Electronic Census has been running for over five years, we're able to undertake longitudinal analysis of the population as well as snapshots. The latest publication includes a new section, showing the status as at March 2021 of all the people that immigrated into Guernsey five years before then. It also includes a count of the population on 21st March 2021 (the official census date in Jersey and the UK) as well as the full statistics for 31st March (our usual snapshot date)."
