50 Facts With Which to Understand the News
Or to do policy with
The charge on an electron is 1.6x10^-19 coulombs. The mass of the Earth is 6x10^24kg and that of the sun is 2x10^30kg. There are approximately pi x 10^7 seconds in a year.1
These are not very useful numbers to know in daily life. But thanks to having done a physics degree, so embedded are they in my brain that I still remember them 20 years later, long after I’ve forgotten how to do a contour integral.
When reading the news - or doing policy work, or journalism - one will, however, frequently come across a bunch of numbers, often very large, that one has to put in context. Is £20 million a lot? How about £20 billion? How many schools are there, anyway?
What follows is a list of 50 basic facts to have at your finger tips that, if you know them2, will help you to make sense of the news and of public policy more broadly.
All figures have - deliberately - been rounded for ease of committing to memory. They are accurate enough to get a handle on something or - with the addition of an ‘about’ - to say on the radio, not to plug into precise calculations.
Population
The population of the UK is 70 million.
The population of England is 60 million.3
The population of the United States is 350 million.
The population of India is 1.5 billion
The population of the world is 8 billion.
London > Scotland > Wales > Northern Ireland.
Demography
Life expectancy is about 80 years.
Total Fertility Rate (children born per woman) is 1.4.
1 in 6 of the population belongs to an ethnic minority – or 1 in 3 of children under 18.4
1 in 5 of the population is aged 65 or over.
Net migration last year was 170,000.5
Economy
The GDP of the UK is £3 trillion.
0.1% of GDP is £3 billion.6
National debt is 95% of GDP.
The deficit is 5% of GDP.
Tax as a share of GDP is 35% – 40%.7
Spending as a share of GDP is 40 – 45%.8
Median salary for a full time employee is £39,000.
Minimum wage is £12.71.
The state pension is £12,500 a year.
35 million people are in employment – 80% of them in the private sector.
Unemployment stands at 5%.9
Prices have roughly doubled since 2000.
The richest 1% pay 25% of income tax; the richest 10% pay over half.
Public services
25. There are about 25,000 schools in England – with about five times as many primary schools as secondary schools.
26. There are 9 million pupils in school.
27. A quarter of these are eligible for Free School Meals.
28. About 6% of children are in private school; about 2% are home educated.10
29. About 1/3 of 18 year olds go straight to higher education – with over 40% going by aged 21.
30. There are around 200 hospitals with an A&E department in England.
31. The NHS waiting list has 7 million cases on it.11
32. The median time to wait for an elective treatment is 3 months.
33. Around 10 million crimes are committed each year.
34. There are approximately 100,000 people in prison.
35. On average, it takes a year between an offence being committed and a case concluding in the Crown Court.
Housing
36. There are 30 million households in the UK.
37. About 2/3 own their own home.
38. About 1 in 6 live in social housing.
39. The average house price in the UK is £250k - £350k.12
40. 200,000 – 300,000 houses are built each year.
Energy
41. Peak electricity demand is 45GW.
42. We get about:
· 30% from wind
· 25% from gas
· 10% from nuclear
· 15% imported
43. The energy bill for a typical household is £1500 - £2000 a year.
Public Spending
Of the £1,400 billion (£1.4 trillion) spent by Government each year, we spend:
44. £200 billion a year on the NHS.
45. £175 billion on pensions and pensioner benefits
46. £150 billion on working age benefits
47. £60 billion on schools
48. £40 billion on defence
49. £0.1 billion on MP salaries…
50. …and £110 billion on debt interest
As one waggish lecturer tried to persuade, the reason it’s not exactly pi is that the Earth moves in an ellipse, rather than a circle.
If you work in public policy, politics or journalism, I would actually encourage you to take an hour or two and memorise the ones you don’t already know.
58 million.
This varies a lot by region.
This is one of the ones that bounces around a lot - in 2022 it was c. 750,000.
Useful for things such as ‘spending X% of GDP on Y.’
Tax is about 36%; total Government income about 39% - the difference includes things such as fees for passports and visas, student loan income, fines and so on.
The difference between (16) and (17) explains (15).
Arguably a considerable underestimate, by historical standards, due to the increase in the number of people not seeking work for reasons of health.
The latter sharply up compared to a generation ago.
Around 6 million people - some are waiting for more than one thing.
Another one that varies a lot by region.
Great post, thank you. I wish you sex-disaggregated the data, most importantly re. prison population. It astounds me how many people are surprised when I tell them that only about 5% of the total prison population are women, although people instinctively know that men commit more crime. They do not, however, realise the extent of the difference. Sex also matters for life expectancy, as women live longer, though I understand in the UK at least the gap is getting smaller, as men’s average life expectancy has increased more than women’s in recent years.
On the home education figures, worth noting that while 1.90% is the Summer '25 overall figure for (known) EHE in England as a % of overall pupil headcount, it varies considerably by age - from 0.77% at KS1 to 3.68% at KS4.