37.6 The number quietly reshaping the high street

A new dataset from the ONS contains a number that helps explain what is happening to Britain’s high streets: 37.6.  That’s the gap between employment in hospitality and retail on central high streets.

In 2015 both sectors started at 100. By 2024, hospitality had risen to 118.2 while retail had fallen to 80.7. The high street, in other words, isn’t emptying - it’s being repurposed.  Retail is shrinking, but hospitality and other services are expanding, leaving overall employment on central high streets significantly positive.  But there’s a complication.

Hospitality employment has begun to fall from its 2022 peak, just as rising labour costs and fragile balance sheets put pressure on the sector that has been filling the space retail left behind.  At the same time, screens are spreading rapidly across foodservice - boosting spending but quietly removing one of hospitality’s defining features: human interaction.

If the high street is now a place where we eat and are served rather than shop, the question becomes an interesting one: Can hospitality sustain the transformation it started?

Read the full analysis