Crawley is one of the UK’s biggest employment hubs with many businesses in the area offering thousands of jobs to locals and commuters alike. So who are Crawley’s biggest employers?

Thales are the UK’s second biggest defence electronics supplier, and earlier this year signed a 10 year agreement worth millions of pounds with the Royals Navy. The company employs over 2300 people at the base in Crawley. With this contract secured, employees of Thales currently have a pretty secure future with the organisation.

Virgin Holidays are perhaps one of the most well-known businesses in Crawley. Locals actively seek jobs here as they are renowned for being an excellent business to work for. They employ over 1100 people in various jobs, and the company also have their training base in Crawley too. Earlier this year the company opened up a further 100 new job opportunities, making some locals very happy indeed.

Surrey Aero club may have started out small back in 1930, but has since expanded into the world’s biggest single-runway airport. The organisation employs 2,500 staff, but this number multiplies significantly if you include employees that have jobs with all the airlines based at the airport. Back in 2009 Global Infrastructure Partners purchased Gatwick for over £1.5 billion. Their goal is to open another runway, which will inevitably create thousands more new job opportunities in the Crawley area.

The famous Sir Stelios Haj-loannou operates his airline Easyjet from Gatwick airport. The company employs over 3700 staff, including jobs for over 700 pilots and over 2000 cabin crew. Easyjet is nearly 15 years old, and currently flies over 100 different routes out of Gatwick airport.

The Swiss chocolate giant Nestlé is also based in Crawley, employing over 800 staff in a number of jobs. But Nestlé don’t just make chocolate, they produce cereals, sweets and the famous Nescafe coffee. Nestlé are a major brand name in the food and drinks sector and only decided to move their Head Office from Croydon to Crawley in 2012.

TUI Travel employs over 800 staff from their base in Crawley, and with Gatwick Airport right outside their door it makes operations pretty much perfect. TUI employs staff all over the world and has an estimated customer base of more than 30 million.

Tescos have a number of large branches around the UK, but in Crawley their are a number of tesco expresses and a huge Tesco Extra, which totals the number of employees to over 1000. They also have a warehouse for their online division based in Crawley. This is set up like normal Tesco store, but without any customers, and there are over 500 employees based at the warehouse alone!

Royal Mail have a huge warehouse based in Crawley, and post from the local area is sorted at the Gatwick Mail Centre, which has jobs for over 600 staff. At Christmas time the business employs a further 300 staff to meet the increase in demands.

Crawley Borough Council is another big employer in the area, offering over 650 jobs across various areas. These include, housing, planning, recycling and many more. With so many different departments and a million and one aspects of the local community to be looking after, there has to be a huge workforce behind the council for everything to be running smoothly and for the jobs to get done.