The Milton Keynes economy is dominated by the service sector, as demonstrated in Table 4:

• It accounts for 4 in 5 of businesses – who provide just over 4 in 5 of the Borough’s jobs
• Only 10% of the Borough’s businesses are in the production sector – with these providing 1 in 8 of the Borough’s jobs

Table 4 – Establishments and Jobs by Sector

Source: Milton Keynes Population Bulletin 2005/6

Table 5 confirms a continuing trend of increasing employment within the service sector, and a corresponding decline in the production sector:

• The service sector now accounts for 83.3% of the Borough’s jobs, compared to 81.5% in 2003
• The production sector now provides 12.6%, compared to 14.5% in 2003

Table 5 – % Jobs Increase by Sector

Source: Milton Keynes Population Bulletin 2005/6

This change is reinforced by Table 6 that shows:

• The production sector saw between 2003 and 2005 a 2.0% fall in the number of employing establishments, whilst
• The service sector saw a 4.2% increase

This confirms the continuation of a long-term trend of the increasing importance of the service sector - between 1999 and 2005:

• The number of service sector businesses increased by over a quarter (26.8%), with the number of jobs increasing by 20.4%
• Nearly 1 in 5 (18.1%) of production sector jobs were lost – but the number of businesses did increase (by 14.3%). Therefore over this 6 year period there has been a significant shift to smaller production businesses

Table 6 - % Establishments increase by Sector

Source: Milton Keynes Population Bulletin 2005/6

Table 7 identifies the industrial structure to broadly reflect that of both the South East and Great Britain, with the following different emphases:

• Agricultural employment is less prevalent in Milton Keynes, as is construction, but not to the same extent
• Compared to the South East, production employment is significantly higher in Milton Keynes. It is also higher than for Great Britain as a whole
• Compared to the South East a lower proportion of Milton Keynes’ jobs are in the service sector, however the proportion is higher than that for Great Britain as a whole

Table 7 – Industrial Structure Milton Keynes, South East, GB  

Source: Milton Keynes Population Bulletin 2005/6