Economic forecasts

This section presents the size of Kent’s labour market currently and how this is expected to change in the future.

Future activity rate growth is a key component in deriving future workforce estimates. Recent changes to the state pension age and the effective abolition of a fixed retirement age are likely to have a major impact of future activity rates. In the absence of national guidance (from the Office for National Statistics) on future activity rate growth nationally. This technical paper - Activity rate forecasts to 2036 (PDF, 510k) sets out the assumptions used by Research and Evaluation for projecting activity rate into the future, to take account of these changes.

Setting unemployment levels is also a key component to the modelling of future housing and job numbers.  The technical paper Setting future unemployment levels for modelling purposes (PDF, 317k) explains the methodology used to set future unemployment as an ambition, rather than to forecast where unemployment might be at a given point in time.

KCC commissioned some baseline economic forecasts from Experian, which drive the Kent Economic Forecasting Model.  These forecasts are now being made available through the interactive forecasting tool (Excel, 1.56Mb) which allow you to examine the forecasts at district level and by 30 industrial sectors.  Please read the notes page on the first page of the tool for details of the forecasts.

If you have any difficulty accessing these documents, please contact research@kent.gov.uk for an alternative.