Annual estimates of life satisfaction, feeling that the things done in life are worthwhile, happiness and anxiety in the UK, by national, country, regional, county, local and unitary authority level and personal characteristics including analysis on the characteristics that are most likely to impact personal well-being.

An overview of UK’s progress across ten domains of national well-being. Latest and historical data are provided. Sub-population breakdowns by UK countries and ITL1 regions, age and sex, as well as quality information, are included where available.

The workplace wellness market in the United Kingdom experienced an increase of just over *** percent between 2022 and 2023. The market size of the workplace wellness industry in the UK was estimated at ***** billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

In 2023, ** percent of organizations in the United Kingdom who were taking active steps to improve employee health and well-being reported that this had a large focus on mental health, with a further ** percent reporting that they had moderately focused on mental health. Additionally, ** percent of organizations reported a large focus on 'good work', which involved programs such as promoting a healthy work-life balance.

The surge in academic research and an enhanced media spotlight on the toll that illness and injury can take on businesses has boosted demand for wellness services. More and more businesses have been investing in wellness services in recent years, with many appreciating the importance of providing corporate wellness services. This growing trend has been propelled by a drop in the UK unemployment rate during the same period over 2021-22. However, massive layoffs at major financial institutions such as HSBC, Barclays and Lloyds since Brexit, sluggish demand from public-sector entities and stiff competition from gyms and in-house services have somewhat stifled growth. Despite some of these challenges, the industry revenue is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 3% over the five years through 2025-26 to £708.2 million. Factors such as rising unemployment, reduced employer confidence and tight corporate budgets dented the demand for wellness services in 2023-24. The shift to remote work since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 challenged the industry to adapt, as new aspects of employee wellness have come to light. Poor economic conditions, including high inflation in the three years through 2024-25, have caused businesses to cut their spending budgets and hamper industry demand. The corporate wellness industry is set to rebound, with growth projected at 1.3% in 2025-26, driven by rising employer investment in staff well-being and a renewed focus on health in the workplace. The outlook for the industry remains strong. The sector is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 1.6% over the five years through 2030-31 to reach £768 million. Higher levels of health consciousness and efforts by businesses to enhance productivity by reducing the costs of poor health, and growth in the online delivery of industry services will boost demand. Britain's ageing workforce and greater emphasis on tackling mental health problems will aid growth. However, corporate budgets are constrained in the short term due to macroeconomic headwinds, somewhat limiting revenue growth. Profit will widen over the coming period.

The latest data for the measures of children’s well-being, complementing the UK Measures of National Well-being.

In 2022, many young people in the United Kingdom and the United States said they were likely to buy mental health and wellbeing focused products. For example, around ***** in 10 surveyed consumers of the Gen Z and millennial variety said they were likely to buy such goods that year. According to the survey, boomers were least likely to buy items for their mental health or wellbeing in 2022 out of all generations.

The UK’s progress across 10 topic areas of national well-being. Breakdowns by UK country and region, age and sex, including quality information where available.

In 2022, many consumers stated they were likely to buy mental health and wellbeing focused products. Specifically, about ******* of surveyed shoppers in the United States and the United Kingdom said they were likely to buy a product for their mental health that year. Approximately a quarter of survey respondents even said they were very likely to make such a purchase.

As of 2023, over ** percent of respondents in the United Kingdom used online searches to access reliable health information. Furthermore, over a ***** of the surveyed public used wearable tech or apps to monitor their health information.

The United Kingdom Mental Wellness market is expected to reach market size of more than USD 9 billion by 2029 due to rising mental health awareness, teletherapy, and workplace well

Standard deviation of responses for 'Worthwhile' in the First ONS Annual Experimental Subjective Wellbeing survey.

The Office for National Statistics has included the four subjective well-being questions below on the Annual Population Survey (APS), the largest of their household surveys.

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
• Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
• Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
• Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

This dataset presents results from the second of these questions, "Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?". Respondents answer these questions on an 11 point scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is ‘not at all’ and 10 is ‘completely’. The well-being questions were asked of adults aged 16 and older.

Well-being estimates for each unitary authority or county are derived using data from those respondents who live in that place. Responses are weighted to the estimated population of adults (aged 16 and older) as at end of September 2011.

The data cabinet also makes available the proportion of people in each county and unitary authority that answer with ‘low wellbeing’ values. For the ‘worthwhile’ question answers in the range 0-6 are taken to be low wellbeing.

This dataset contains the standard deviation of the responses, alongside the corresponding sample size.

The ONS survey covers the whole of the UK, but this dataset only includes results for counties and unitary authorities in England, for consistency with other statistics available at this website.

At this stage the estimates are considered ‘experimental statistics’, published at an early stage to involve users in their development and to allow feedback. Feedback can be provided to the ONS via this email address.

The APS is a continuous household survey administered by the Office for National Statistics. It covers the UK, with the chief aim of providing between-census estimates of key social and labour market variables at a local area level. Apart from employment and unemployment, the topics covered in the survey include housing, ethnicity, religion, health and education. When a household is surveyed all adults (aged 16+) are asked the four subjective well-being questions.

The 12 month Subjective Well-being APS dataset is a sub-set of the general APS as the well-being questions are only asked of persons aged 16 and above, who gave a personal interview and proxy answers are not accepted. This reduces the size of the achieved sample to approximately 120,000 adult respondents in England.

The original data is available from the ONS website.

Detailed information on the APS and the Subjective Wellbeing dataset is available here.

As well as collecting data on well-being, the Office for National Statistics has published widely on the topic of wellbeing. Papers and further information can be found here.

Contains all the current domains and measures of national well-being for young people. As well as providing the latest data for each measure, where available a time series of data are also presented along with useful links to data sources and other websites which may be of interest.

Surveys of wellbeing, nature connectedness and pro-nature conservation behaviour scores from adult human participants before and after taking part in nature-based activities, including citizen science, in 2020 are presented. Participants were recruited via a public campaign and were randomly allocated into groups: citizen science, noticing nature (three good things in nature activity), combined citizen science and three good things in nature, and a wait list control. They were invited to take part in activities up to five times in the following eight days. Online surveys of wellbeing and nature connectedness were undertaken at people’s sign up to the project and after the eight days of activities. Demographic characteristics and people’s engagement with the project and responses to the pathways to nature connectedness were recorded after the eight days of activities. The research was carried out to investigate concern about the negative impacts of COVID-19 movement restrictions and social distancing on people's wellbeing and mental health. Research was funded through NERC grant NE/V009656/1 - COVID 19 - Does nature-based citizen science enhance well-being and mitigate negative effects of social isolation? Full details about this dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.5285/56d4b055-c66b-42b9-8962-a47dfcf3b8b0

Self-reported measure of peoples overall health and wellbeing

In November 2018 the government published a voluntary framework to encourage businesses to report how many of their staff have a disability or health condition and their health and wellbeing.

This report sets out progress made in DWP for 2024.

Acknowledgements

University of Manchester, Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research (CMIST), UK Data Service, Office for National Statistics. (2016). Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, Well-Being Module, April-May 2015: Unrestricted Access Teaching Dataset. [data collection]. 2nd Edition. Office for National Statistics, [original data producer(s)]. Office for National Statistics. SN: 7913, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7913-2. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v2.0