Introduction
This report is one of a collection covering Jersey’s population at the end of 2025. The statistics are produced using linked administrative data, which is information held by public authorities for delivering services.
Additional population and migration statistics can be found in the related reports:
Linked administrative data provides timely, wide-ranging evidence of individuals accessing services in Jersey and is used to determine whether someone was resident or not at specific points in time. More information on the methods used is available in the Methodology and quality report.
Things you need to know
Residential and employment statuses in this report are based on Employment, Social Security and Housing (ESSH) data, but have been adjusted by Statistics Jersey to better reflect probable eligibility. These adjusted statuses may differ from the status recorded by ESSH, as people do not always request an updated status when they become eligible.
The data does not differentiate between those with Permanent Entitled and Entitled and so these statuses are reported together. Similarly, it does not differentiate between Licensed and Licensed lease only and so these are reported together too. This report also includes numbers for Registered status, which was renamed to Standard status following an update to the law on 14 September 2026.
This report includes all people aged 16 and over. Only people aged 16 and over are legally required to register with ESSH to be given a residential and employment status. Numbers in last year’s report only included people aged 20 and over and are therefore not comparable to the numbers in this report.
Where this report refers to ‘adults’, it means people aged 16 years and over, and where it refers to ‘children’ it means people aged under 16 years. There were 89,270 adult Jersey residents at the end of 2025, compared to 15,220 children.
The statistics in this report are in the testing phase and are classified as experimental statistics and are therefore not Tier 1 statistics.
Numbers have been rounded independently. As a result, year-on-year changes may not match the difference between the rounded current and previous numbers, and totals may not equal the sum of the rounded parts.
Main points
- The Licensed population increased by 44% between 2020 and 2025, as net migration outweighed movements to other statuses.
- An estimated 1,270 people gained Entitled status in 2025, mostly reflecting migrants that reached 10 years of continuous residency.
- In 2025, net migration was +480 for people with Registered status, +300 for Licensed status, -770 for Entitled status, and +70 for Entitled for work.
- The Entitled population increased by 2% between 2020 and 2025, mainly because the number of people gaining Entitled status exceeded net outward migration of this group.
- People with Entitled status made up 84% of the adult population (aged 16 and over) in 2025; those with Entitled for work, Registered, and Licensed status made up 7%, 6%, and 4% respectively.
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Population by residential and employment status
Adult population by residential and employment status
The Registered population fell between 2017 and 2021 but has increased slightly since. There are typically more Registered people present at mid-year, although this seasonal pattern was disrupted during 2020 and 2021 by coronavirus (COVID-19).
The Licensed population increased steadily throughout the period.
The Entitled population increased by around 1,000 people between 2017 and 2018. This increase then slowed, before levelling off in 2022. The increase has since resumed at a lower rate of around 500 people per year between 2023 and 2025.
Age and sex profile for each residential and employment status
The Registered population had considerably more males than females and was the most uneven split of any status. The Licensed population had slightly more males than females, while the Entitled and Entitled for work populations both had slightly more females than males.
The proportion of males increased in the Registered population, from 54% in 2020 to 61% at the end of 2025. In contrast, the proportion of females increased in the Licensed population, from 42% in 2020 to 48% in 2025.
Factors contributing to population change by residential and employment status
This section shows how migration, status changes, ageing, and deaths affect the adult population for each residential and employment status. Population change is split into three components:
- net migration – the number of people arriving minus the number of people leaving
- net transitions – people moving into a status minus people moving out of it, as their circumstances or length of residency changes; for example, a person gaining Entitled for work status after five years of continuous residency with Registered status
- net other effects – people turning age 16 minus deaths; this mainly affects the Entitled population and was close to net zero for all statuses
The Entitled population had negative net migration in every year between 2017 and 2025. This is to be expected, as relatively few people can move to the Island already holding this status. In practice, this mainly comprises previous long-term residents returning to the Island.
The Registered and Licensed populations had positive net migration in every year between 2017 and 2025.
The Entitled for work group had net migration slightly above zero in 2024 and 2025 but was slightly negative in every year prior to this.
The following sections show the contributions of net migration and net transitions, as well as net other effects, to the changes in the population size of each residential and employment status.
Entitled status
In 2025, net migration for the Entitled population was -770, with more people leaving than moving to Jersey with this status. Net migration was negative in every year between 2017 and 2025, partly because relatively few people move to Jersey with Entitled status.
The net transitions effect was +1,180 in 2025 and was positive throughout the period, mainly due to people moving from Entitled for work to Entitled status.
Overall, the Entitled population increased by 2% between 2020 and 2025, as gains from status transitions outweighed net outward migration of this group. Annual change fell to around zero in 2022 before rising again, reaching +500 in 2025.
Entitled for work status
In 2025, net migration for the Entitled for work population was around +70. This figure includes migrants who have Entitled for work status by way of their partner having Entitled or Licensed status.
Net transitions were -340 in 2025, mainly reflecting that fewer people moved from Registered to Entitled for work after five years of residency than from Entitled for work to Entitled after 10 years.
Overall, the Entitled for work population decreased by 360 between 2020 and 2025.
Registered status
Net migration for the Registered population was +480 in 2025 and was positive in every year between 2017 and 2025. It was just above zero in the 12 months before June 2020, around the time of the first COVID-19 lockdown and the UK leaving the EU.
Between 700 and 1,000 people moved from Registered status to another status in each of the last five years, mostly to Entitled for work. In 2025, the net transition effect was -700.
Between 2019 and 2021, the number moving from Registered to Entitled for work status was greater than net migration among people with Registered status, resulting in a decrease in the Registered population.
In 2022, higher net migration outweighed transitions from Registered status, leading to an increase in the Registered population. After 2022, net migration slowly decreased, while net transitions remained similar, resulting in negative total change by 2025.
Licensed status
Net migration for the Licensed population was +300 in 2025, higher than the +140 seen five years previous in 2020. Annual net migration increased substantially in 2022 and has remained at higher levels to 2025.
There were 140 more people moving out of Licensed status than moving into it in 2025, reducing the overall change. It is more common for people to move to Jersey with Licensed status than gain it while already being resident.
Between 2020 and 2025, the Licensed population increased from 2,390 to 3,440, a rise of 44% (averaging +210 per year), as positive net migration outweighed transitions out of Licensed status.
Migration rates by residential and employment status
Changes in the Entitled, Registered, and Licensed populations are in part influenced by net migration. To compare how migration affects different residential statuses, immigration and emigration rates are shown, defined as the number of people moving in or out over the previous 12 months per 1,000 individuals in each group, calculated using the mid-year population.
This approach allows comparison between groups of different sizes. In 2025, the Entitled population was more than 12 times larger than the Entitled for work population and over 21 times larger than the Licensed population. While migration rates help compare the relative impact of migration across residential statuses, the underlying numbers of migrants are also important, as they determine the overall contribution of each group to population change.
The Registered population had the highest migration rates in 2025, with 277 inward migrants and 194 outward migrants per 1,000 people, while the Entitled population had the lowest rates, with 9 inward migrants and 19 outward migrants per 1,000 people.
The Registered population also had the largest amount of immigration in 2025, with a figure of 1,590, despite its relatively small population size. In contrast, the Entitled population had the largest amount of emigration, with a figure of 1,430, in part due to its relatively large population size.
People moving to Entitled or Entitled for work status
These numbers show people moving to a residential status from another. They do not include those reaching age 16 and being assigned their first status.
People moving to Entitled status primarily move from Entitled for work status (83% in 2025), but some also move from Licensed status (13%), and Registered status (4%).
People moving to Entitled for work status primarily move from Registered status (90% in 2025), but some also move from Licensed status (9%).
In 2025, the number of people moving to Entitled status was 1,270. This was the highest number of people moving to Entitled status since the peak year-end figure of 2018, where 1,600 people gained Entitled status.
The number of people moving to Entitled for work status in 2025 was the lowest in the 2017 to 2025 period at 760 people, much lower than seen five years previously in 2020, where 1,030 people moved to Entitled for work status.
Revisions
The population estimation method requires 12 months of activity data after the reference date to help distinguish between individuals who have left the Island and those who remain resident but have limited recent activity. This introduces considerable lag in publishing accurate population and migration estimates.
Provisional population and migration estimates are therefore produced for the prior year with a reduced set of activity data to provide more timely information. These provisional estimates will be revised and replaced with final estimates in the following year’s report, when the full set of data has become available.
More information about provisional estimates and the revisions policy can be found in the Methodology and quality report.
Data sources and methods
Population and migration estimates are produced annually using linked administrative data. The latest of these estimates are for the year 2025.
Administrative data is data collected by the government for the purposes of running services such as education, health, and social security benefits.
For detailed information on how population estimates are calculated from linked administrative data see the latest Methodology and quality report.
Additional population and migration statistics can be found in the related reports:
Downloadable datasets for these statistics are available on Open Data.