Nearly one in six will have to work Christmas Day this year and almost 10 million people will be working on Boxing Day.
16 percent of adults say they will have to go to work on Christmas Day. Of these, more than a quarter work in retail. Almost one in five (9.6m people) will be working on Boxing Day. For millions of people, Boxing Day now means sale shopping and as a result 9.55m people (19 percent of adults) – many of them with jobs in retail, but also in transport and hospitality – say that they will be working this Boxing Day. The results come as part of new research* carried out for budgeting account provider thinkmoney.co.uk, which found that the traditional two-day Christmas break is a thing of the past for millions of Britons.
Christmas Day Workers
One in six (16 percent) adults said they will have to work on ChristmasDay this year, instead of spending the day with their family or friends.
The main reason for people having to work Christmas Day was because they were on a rota, with a third of respondents saying that this year was their turn to work the day. Almost as common a reason (32 percent) was people being contracted to work Christmas. However, nearly three in ten (28 percent) had opted to come in on Christmas Day as they got overtime pay for working it. Just one in 15 (seven percent) said that they didn’t celebrate Christmas so they’d volunteered to work.
More than one in six (17 percent) Christmas Day workers were NHS employees, and over one in eight (13 percent) worked in the hospitality or entertainment sector, including restaurants, pubs, or hotels. The majority of these workers are likely to be providing Christmas dinner to other families this year.
Boxing Day workers
Almost one in five people (19 percent) questioned for thinkmoney said that they will be working this Boxing Day.
However, it seems that not everyone will miss out on having a day with their family. Nearly nine in 10 (87 percent) of those who had to work Christmas said that they would celebrate it on a different day instead. Ian Williams, spokesman for thinkmoney, says: “Time was when Christmas Day and Boxing Day saw most shops, bars and restaurants stay closed. Nowadays many retailers start their online sales on Christmas Day, meaning that Boxing Day has become one of the largest shopping days of the year. So as well as the traditional bank holiday workers – such as the emergency services, doctors and hospital staff – we now find millions of people working in retail, leisure and transport having their holiday cut short.”
*OnePoll questioned a nationally representative sample of 2,000 adults aged 18 and over between 21st November and 28th November 2014, of whom 636 were Scottish residents. Figures have been extrapolated to fit ONS 2013 population projections of 50,371,000 UK adults.
