IN Brief:
- New analysis suggests 760,000 people work in UK warehousing, compared with an official figure of about 440,000.
- The gap reflects warehousing roles embedded inside sectors such as retail and manufacturing.
- UKWA is calling for stronger recognition of warehousing in skills, employment, and industrial policy.
The UK Warehousing Association has highlighted analysis suggesting that UK warehousing employment is more than 70% higher than official figures indicate.
The research estimates that 760,000 people work in UK warehousing, compared with an Office for National Statistics figure of around 440,000. The gap reflects the way warehousing and storage roles are classified when they sit inside other sectors, including retail, manufacturing, wholesale, and food distribution.
A revised workforce estimate changes the scale of the sector in employment terms. Warehousing is often treated as a property, transport, or fulfilment issue, but the larger figure places it among the country’s major operational labour markets. Policy decisions based on narrower statistics risk understating the sector’s weight in regional employment, productivity, and trade resilience.
Even the incomplete official figure has grown substantially since 2011, outpacing wider jobs growth across the economy. Online retail contributed to that expansion, but the warehouse footprint has also been shaped by 3PLs, high street retailers, manufacturers, food and drink producers, wholesalers, importers, and industrial supply chains.
UKWA is using the findings to push for stronger recognition of warehousing as an employment and skills priority. Clearer career pathways, better access to training, and reform of apprenticeship support are all part of that agenda. The association has warned that many employers struggle to use apprenticeship levy funds effectively, even as demand grows for both entry-level and technical warehouse skills.
The skills challenge is becoming more complex as automation spreads. Warehouses still depend heavily on manual work, supervision, engineering support, transport coordination, and inventory control, but the mix of roles is changing. Employers increasingly need people who can work with warehouse management systems, automated storage, robotics, data tools, battery-electric fleets, and safety systems.
A hidden workforce creates a hidden planning problem. If hundreds of thousands of warehouse workers are buried inside other sector classifications, national and local policy may under-plan for the training, transport links, land use, and energy infrastructure needed to keep logistics operations functioning. Warehouses are labour-intensive, technology-enabled operating centres that determine how quickly goods reach factories, hospitals, construction sites, stores, and homes.
The pressure on warehouse capacity and adaptability has been growing across the industrial economy. Industrial supply chains are under pressure to become more elastic, with manufacturers and logistics providers needing flexible capacity without uncontrolled cost. Warehousing sits directly inside that equation, absorbing demand swings, port disruption, labour shortages, inventory frontloading, and transport volatility.
Large operators are already investing at a scale that reflects the sector’s central role. Aldi’s £500m Bardon warehouse operation and Amazon’s European robotics investment both show how facilities, automation, labour planning, and network resilience are being developed together. Automation does not remove the workforce question; it changes the skills attached to it.
The figures strengthen the case for treating warehousing as national industrial infrastructure. Planning decisions, grid connections, transport access, vocational training, and local labour market support all influence warehouse performance. If the sector is larger than official numbers suggest, the cost of under-recognition is larger as well.
A more accurate workforce picture would give policymakers, training bodies, and employers a better basis for investment. Without it, the UK risks treating one of the economy’s essential operating systems as a secondary activity hidden inside other categories.
