The Value of Beauty Report is Here: Hair and Beauty Contributes £5.1 Billion to UK Economy

Hair and beauty service providers, which includes salons and freelance hairdressers, contributed £5.1bn to UK economy in 2022, according to The Value of Beauty Report, created by Oxford Economics for the British Beauty Council. Encouragingly, this figure is 81% of the industry's pre-pandemic 2019 peak of £6.2bn, suggesting that the sector is making a recovery, despite the challenges of the cost of living crisis. The report also showed that the services division of the hair and beauty industry also supports almost a quarter of a million jobs, which is 78% of 2019 levels. British Beauty Council Chief Executive Millie Kendall said: “The service sector is a very large part of our overall contribution to Britain's economy, with hair and beauty service providers making up the largest part of our offering. “It’s grown 20% year on year which is about billion a year so it's definitely moving in the right direction.” The research was commissioned with the aim of quantifying how the industry’s economic impact has evolved since 2018, since the British Beauty Council’s first Value of Beauty Report was published in 2019.

The True Value of the Hair and Beauty Industry?

The new report found that the beauty industry’s total contribution to UK GDP (gross domestic product) in 2022 was £24.5 billion. This includes not just treatment providers but also retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers. Just over half of this (£12.3 billion) was generated by the industry itself and this figure represented 0.5% of the GDP of the UK. After beauty and hair service providers at £5.1bn, the next biggest contributor was beauty retailers at £3.3bn, followed by wholesalers at £2.1bn, manufacturers at £1.1bn then advertising and marketing services at £0.7bn A further £4.9 billion of the original £24.5bn figure was created by the beauty industry’s domestic supply chain purchases. This is known as the industry’s “indirect impact”. Additionally, wage payments made to industry workers and its supply chain accounted for £7.3bn, this is known as "induced impact".

How Many People are Employed in the Hair and Beauty Industry?

The personal care industry as a whole supported 550,000 jobs in 2022, which means the personal care sector represented 1.1% of total jobs in the UK in 2022. Out of the 550,000 figure, 379,000 of these jobs were supported directly by the industry itself, with the hair and beauty services sector supporting direct employment of 209,000 people alone. The report also showed that in 2022, the personal care industry supported tax contributions of £6.8 billion to the UK Treasury – a £3.4 billion direct contribution, with £1.3bn from indirect and £2.2bn from induced channels.

Education and Social Mobility in the Hair and Beauty Sector

The industry also plays an important role in educating its workforce, having supported the completion of almost 80,000 recognised qualifications in the 2021/22 academic year alone.

The report also looked into the impact of the beauty industry on both social mobility and diversity. It found that the personal care industry has four times as many women as men and has a younger than average workforce.

The industry helps to support employment and business opportunities in communities that have relatively high rates of deprivation. A greater proportion of the personal care industry’s employment is concentrated in areas with relatively high income deprivation and unemployment versus comparable sectors such as the retail sector and construction.

Although men are in the minority in the industry, they are more diverse in our sector, than in the wider economy as a whole. For example, ethnic minority men are twice as represented in the personal care sector compared with the economy as a whole. An overview summary of the Value of Beauty report is available for download on the British Beauty Council website. The full report can also be purchased.  

Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash