Government · UK · Office for National Statistics
Only 6% of UK Firms Using AI Have Cut Headcount
Three in ten UK businesses now use AI, rising to 38% of firms with 10 or more staff. Admin and creative roles are feeling it most, yet only 6% of those adopters say AI has reduced their headcount.
Source published Summarised
Key findings at a glance
- 30% of UK businesses used at least one AI technology in September 2026, up from 9% in September 2023
- 38% of businesses with 10 or more employees use AI, up 3 percentage points since June 2026
- 51% of businesses with 250 or more employees use AI, up from 19% in September 2023
- 29% of micro businesses with fewer than 10 employees use AI
- 38% of AI-using firms with 10 or more staff say admin and clerical roles are the most affected
- 24% of AI-using firms with 10 or more staff name creative or design roles as the most affected
- 37% of AI-using wholesale and retail businesses say creative or design roles are the most affected, ahead of any other role
- 10% of AI-using firms with 10 or more staff name sales and customer service roles as the most affected
- 6% of AI-using firms with 10 or more staff say AI has reduced their overall headcount
- 21% of businesses with 10 or more employees use large language models to generate text, the most common AI technology
- 19% of businesses with 10 or more employees use AI for visual content creation, up 15 points since 2023
- 60% of information and communication businesses use AI, the highest of any industry
What the report covers
The Office for National Statistics asks UK businesses which AI technologies they use roughly once a quarter, as part of its Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS). The September 2026 results, published on 8 October, put adoption at 30% of all businesses. That is broadly flat on June but up from 9% when the question was first asked in September 2023. Among firms with 10 or more employees the figure is 38%, up 3 points in a quarter, and among those with 250 or more staff it reaches 51%. Micro businesses with fewer than 10 employees trail at 29%. The adoption series continues the one we covered in our report on the June 2026 BICS wave and in the ONS's three-year review of AI use in UK businesses.
What is new is the workforce picture. Of firms with 10 or more employees that use AI, 38% say administrative and clerical roles have been the most affected, up 9 points since the question was introduced in December 2025. Creative or design roles come next at 24%, followed by data analysis at 22% and managerial roles at 18%. Only 6% say AI has reduced their overall headcount, fewer than 1% say it has increased it, and 60% report no change.
Text generation with large language models (21% of firms with 10 or more staff) and visual content creation (19%) remain the most common uses, up 16 and 15 points respectively since September 2023. Information and communication is the most AI-intensive industry at 60%. The same survey wave also covered energy and fuel price concerns, supply chains and climate change. This report focuses on the AI questions.
What this means for UK marketers
Creative work is where AI is landing. Almost one in five firms with 10 or more staff now uses AI for visual content, and in wholesale and retail 37% of AI adopters say creative or design roles are the most affected, well ahead of admin at 20%. For UK ecommerce brands that usually means product imagery, lifestyle shots and ad variations made in-house rather than commissioned. It is cheaper, but it moves the quality and compliance burden onto the brand. The ASA's guidance on AI-generated ads and deepfakes is clear that the CAP Code applies however an ad was made, and that the advertiser stays responsible even when an automated platform built it. If you produce AI imagery at volume, put a human review step in front of it that checks for misleading product depictions and harmful stereotypes before anything goes live.
The headcount figure matters for planning. With only 6% of adopters cutting staff, most firms are using AI to produce more with the same team, which means more content competing for the same attention. Pew has already found signs of AI writing on 35% of recent web pages. When output is cheap, the differentiators are original data, real expertise and a clear point of view. If your content plan rests on volume, revisit it with an SEO strategy built around original, expert content.
The size gap is the third signal. Half of large employers use AI against 29% of micro businesses. For B2B marketers selling AI-enabled services or software, small firms are the untapped market, and the message that lands is practical: admin hours saved, not jobs cut. For small businesses themselves, the sensible start is low-risk work such as drafting copy and producing creative variations to test, judged on conversions rather than output. That is the kind of test-and-measure setup we build into digital marketing for small businesses.
How they got the data
BICS is a voluntary fortnightly survey of private sector businesses run by the ONS. Wave 165 was live from 21 September to 4 October 2026, and 9,933 of the 38,592 businesses sampled responded, a response rate of 25.7%. Results are weighted by business count rather than employment, so each business counts once whatever its size, which is why the all-business figure sits close to the micro-business one. The sampling frame follows the Monthly Business Survey, which covers the UK for production industries and Great Britain for construction, retail and services. It excludes agriculture, oil and gas extraction, energy supply, finance and insurance, public administration and defence, and public provision of education and health. The results are official statistics in development and the ONS advises caution when using them. The BICS quality and methodology information covers weighting and uncertainty in detail.
Adoption is the share of businesses reporting use of at least one listed AI technology, such as text generation with large language models, visual content creation or machine learning for data processing. The questions on roles and headcount go to businesses that use AI or are not sure whether they do; the roles question has been asked since December 2025. The wholesale and retail figures and the role percentages beyond admin and creative come from the ONS dataset published alongside the bulletin rather than the bulletin text. Full wording is in the ONS survey questions for this wave.
Government · UK
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From Office for National Statistics · published 08/10/2026