Roofers, beauticians and bar staff are among the occupations where people work close to each other but which are likely to have the highest levels of non-vaccination against Covid-19, new figures suggest.
Around one in five (20.8%) roofers and tilers in England aged 18 to 64 have not received a vaccine, along with roughly the same proportion of complementary medicine professionals (20.9%) and beauticians (19.5%).
Other jobs that involve working in close physical proximity with fellow employees but have comparatively high levels of non-vaccination include telesales workers (17.2%), bar staff (16.5%) and road construction operatives (16.1%).
The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), are the first to estimate levels of non-vaccination among all working adults in England under the age of 65, as well as breaking down the figures according to how close employees are to each other – defined as being within an arm’s length or touching.
Jobs that fall in this category where at least one in seven people are likely to be unvaccinated include bricklayers (15.7%), security guards (14.9%) and hairdressers and barbers (14.6%).
The figure is closer to one in 10 for chefs (11.5%), care workers and home carers (10.3%) and shopkeepers (10%).
By contrast, some of the lowest estimates for close-proximity occupations are for headteachers (1.9% unvaccinated), GPs (2.4%), vets (three percent) and police officers (3.3%).
For all jobs, regardless of the proximity of other employees, the highest level of non-vaccination was estimated to be among people working in “elementary construction occupations” – such as carrying building materials and digging trenches – with nearly one in four (23.2%) likely to have received no doses.
Some of the non-close-proximity jobs with high estimates of non-vaccination were scaffolders and riggers (22.3%), delivery operatives (19.6%) and packers, bottlers and canners (18.8%).
All figures are for vaccinations delivered up to December 31, based on people recorded in the 2011 and 2021 censuses and registered with a GP.
