Socio-economic data
Figure 1: Off and on-sreen contributions, parental occupation
Figure 2: Off and on-screen contributions, fee-paying school
Figure 3: Senior and non-senior contributions, parental occupation
Figure 4: Senior and non-senior roles, fee-paying school
Figure 5: Off-screen contributions by genre, parental occupation
Figure 6: Off-screen contributions by genre, school type
Headlines
In Spring 2025, the Creative Diversity Network updated the Diamond survey to include questions about socioeconomic background. From this date, contributors whose previous survey had expired or who were new to Diamond completed the revised survey, which included questions about education and parental occupation. For programmes broadcast between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026, almost 180,000 programme contributions were linked to over 12,000 new diversity forms.
The TV production industry is dominated by people who grew up in a professional household. Both on and off-screen, almost 60% of programme contributions come from cast and crew who grew up in a professional household; this compares to 37% of people in the general working population who come from a similar household.
People from a working-class background make only around one quarter of programme contributions (27% off-screen; 26% on-screen), despite making up 39% of the national working population.
As an industry, relatively few contributions are being made by people from an intermediate background (14% off-screen and 16% on-screen compared to 24% nationally). This ‘missing middle’ perhaps accentuates the divide felt between the other two other groups as well as the overall dominance of the professional classes.
Across the industry, private school education is higher than the national average with 13% of off-screen contributions and 14% of on-screen contributions being made by people who attended a fee-paying school compared to the national average (7.5%).
Although senior and non-senior roles share a very similar profile when it comes to parental occupation, differences between these two groups are evident in terms of private education. 17% of off-screen senior role contributions were made by someone who was privately educated, compared to 11% of non-senior role contributions. This suggests that educational privilege may be more important than class privilege when it comes to getting on in the industry.
On-screen, Children’s programmes have the highest proportion of contributions coming from people who grew up in a professional household (67%) and also the highest rate of contributions from people who attended a private school (25%).
Professional background: parental occupation Our classifications of background by parental occupation are based on Social Mobility Commission criteria. For example:
Professional backgrounds include modern professional and traditional occupations, such as teacher, solicitor, medical practitioner, software designer, as well as senior or junior managers and administrators (e.g. chief executive, office manager, bank manager).
Intermediate backgrounds include occupations such as secretary, call centre agent and clerical worker, and small business owners (e.g. plumbing company, taxi firm, shop owner).
Working-class backgrounds include technical and craft occupations (e.g. electrician, plumber) as well as routine, semi-routine, manual and service occupations (e.g. machine operatives, sales assistants, drivers, labourers) and also the long-term unemployed.
More details about how we classify occupations can be found here.
Senior roles
When it comes to parental occupation, the proportion of professional, intermediate and working-class backgrounds is very similar across both senior and non-senior roles. Only around a quarter (27%) of senior and non-senior contributions are from people who grew up in a working-class household, with senior and non-senior cohorts both being dominated by those who grew up in professional households.
Although attendance at a fee-paying school is higher than the national average across both cohorts, there is a higher prevalence of private school attendees among those in senior roles than in non-senior roles. One in five (21%) senior contributors attended a fee-paying school, and collectively they made 17% of programme contributions in a senior role. Among non-senior contributors, one in eight (12%) went to a private school, and collectively they made 11% of contributions in a non-senior role.
Genres
Off-screen, all genres have at least 55% of contributions being made by people who grew up in a professional household, which is high compared to the proportion of people nationally who have this background (37%).
Drama and Current Affairs have particularly large proportions of contributions made by people from a professional background (64% and 65% respectively). Consequently, these genres have low representation from working class groups (24% Drama and 19% Current Affairs).
People from a working-class background are making the most contributions off-screen on Lifestyle (30%) and Factual Entertainment (32%) programmes, although representation is still low compared to the population benchmark (39%).
Off-screen, we find that private school attendance is particularly high in Lifestyle programmes, with almost one quarter of contributions (24%) being made by someone who attended an independent school.
Private school attendance rates are much lower on Children’s and Drama programmes (9%) where they are closer to the national benchmark of 7.5%. However, in these genres, there are more contributions from people who attended school outside of the UK or who said they ‘don’t know’ whether their school was a fee-paying one. Across all other genres, rates of private school attendance are very similar off-screen – between 13.3% and 14.3%.
On-screen we observe a different profile with a more balanced workforce across some genres.
On-screen roles
Although over-50s make up almost half of the national population (47%), on-screen they make only around one third of non-scripted contributions and around one fifth of scripted appearances.
Furthermore, over-50s are far less likely to be appearing as Lead Actor (13%) but more likely to be appearing as a Supporting Actor (23%) or in a Background role (32%).
People over 50 are more likely to be making an appearance in a Main Contributor or Contributor role (both 37%) than in a Presenter role (27%). The proportion of contributions made by over-50s in a Presenter role has increased considerably over the past five years – from 13% in 2020 to 27% in 2025.
Broadcasters
Representation by over-50s off-screen has been increasing on all programmes except those made by Sky. In 2025, the proportion of contributions being made by over-50s was highest for UKTV programmes (36%) and ITV (33%), and lowest for Channel 4 programmes (21%).
On-screen, a similar pattern of growth is evident at most broadcasters. However, the proportion of contributions being made by over-50s on Sky’s programmes has been decreasing – from a high of 38% in 2019 to the second lowest of all broadcasters (29%) in 2025. Between 2023 and 2025, ITV saw substantial increases in the proportion of contributions being made by over-50s both on and off-screen.