UNITED KINGDOM / AGILITYPR.NEWS / July 28, 2026 / New analysis of the UK warehousing sector, carried out by the UK Warehousing Association, suggests it employs around 760,000 people nationally - over 70% more than official figures have suggested.

Many of these roles have historically been hidden within broader retail and manufacturing employment figures, meaning the true scale of the workforce moving goods around the country's warehouses has gone largely unrecognised.

Midland Pallet Trucks says the finding matters particularly for the Midlands, home to one of the largest concentrations of warehousing and distribution activity in the UK. With so many people now confirmed to be working in and around warehouses in the region, the company argues it is worth pausing to consider the physical demands placed on that workforce every single day.

A large proportion of warehouse roles involve repetitive manual handling, whether that's moving stock between storage and picking areas, loading vehicles, or shifting pallets across a site. For many of these workers, the equipment they use dozens of times a shift has a direct bearing on how physically demanding their job is.

Phil Chesworth, Managing Director at Midland Pallet Trucks, said, "It's easy to talk about warehousing as an abstract part of the economy, but these figures are a reminder that it's built on real people doing physically demanding work, day in, day out, often without much attention paid to them. The Midlands has always been at the heart of that, and these numbers confirm just how big that workforce really is here.

"What strikes me is that a lot of the roles behind this figure are the ones that get least attention when businesses think about investment. Everyone talks about automation and robotics, but for most Midlands operators, it's still someone operating a pallet truck, a stacker truck or a lift table that keeps the operation moving. If the workforce is bigger than we thought, then making sure that equipment is doing its job properly, rather than adding unnecessary strain, matters more than ever.

"We'd like to see this data prompt a bit more thought locally about the basics. Not everything needs a big capital project: sometimes it's simply making sure the right equipment, properly maintained and suited to the job, is in the hands of the people doing this work every day."

For more information, visit https://www.midlandpallettrucks.com.