Beauty and hair services contribute £5.1bn to UK economy

Beauty and hair service providers, including salons and freelancer practitioners, contributed £5.1bn to UK economy in 2022, 81% of its pre-Covid 2019 peak of £6.2bn. 

The new figures come from The Value of Beauty Report, created by Oxford Economics for the British Beauty Council (BBCo).

The report also showed that the services division of the 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.

What is the value of the beauty industry?

The new report found that the beauty industry’s total contribution to UK GDP in 2022 – including not just treatment providers but also retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers – was £24.5 bn. 

Just over half of this (£12.3 billion) was generated by the industry itself and this figure represented 0.5% of the nation’s GDP.

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 marjeting 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 workers in the industry and its supply chain accounted for £7.3bn, known as induced impact.

How many people are employed in the beauty industry?

The personal care industry as a whole supported 550,000 jobs in 2022.

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 alone.
 
This means the personal care sector represented 1.1% of total jobs in the UK in 2022.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Although men are in the minority in the industry, they are more diverse in beauty and hair than in the wider economy as a whole.
 
For example, ethnic minority men are twice as represented in the personal care industry 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, where the full report can also be purchased.