21st September 2026
Dounreay Supports Almost One in Four Jobs Across Caithness and North Sutherland
Dounreay's importance to the Caithness economy is even greater than many people might realise.
A new economic impact assessment commissioned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and carried out by PwC estimates that the Dounreay site supported £179 million of economic activity in Caithness and North Sutherland during 2024/25.
Even more strikingly, the report estimates that Dounreay supported 2,624 full-time equivalent jobs across the area.
That includes 1,315 jobs directly at Dounreay, another 735 through its supply chain and a further 574 jobs supported by the spending of employees and people working in businesses connected to the site.
Put another way, PwC estimates that 23% of all jobs in Caithness and North Sutherland are supported by Dounreay.
The equivalent figure for the whole Highland Council area is just 2.1%.
The difference tells us something important about the geography of the Highlands. Looking at Highland as a single local authority can disguise the economic importance of individual industries to much smaller communities.
PwC has therefore carried out a separate analysis for Caithness and North Sutherland because Highland is the largest local authority in the UK by geographical area. The analysis covers the Caithness and North Sutherland data zones, including Wick, Thurso and surrounding areas.
Nearly a fifth of the local economy
The employment figures are impressive, but the GVA figures are perhaps even more revealing.
Dounreay's total estimated contribution of £179 million represents 19.9% of the total GVA of Caithness and North Sutherland.
The direct contribution alone is estimated at £97 million, equivalent to 10.8% of the area's GVA.
That means roughly one pound in every five of the economic value generated in the area is associated with Dounreay when the direct, supply-chain and wider spending effects are included.
The figure is also considerably higher than the previous assessment.
PwC estimates that Dounreay's contribution to Caithness and North Sutherland has increased by 56% in real terms compared with the previous study carried out in 2022.
One of the reasons is higher spending on wages. Employee wage expenditure increased by 43%, while the induced economic contribution from household spending increased by 88%. Supply-chain effects also increased by 64%.
These figures help explain why changes at Dounreay matter far beyond the site boundary.
A new contract, an increase in the workforce or additional investment does not simply affect people employed behind the security fence. It can affect local contractors, shops, accommodation, transport, professional services and many other businesses.
Dounreay is different from most nuclear sites
The report also puts Dounreay into a wider UK context.
Across the 17 NDA sites included in the study, PwC estimates a combined contribution of £4.1 billion to UK GVA and around 56,000 full-time equivalent jobs during 2024/25.
Dounreay alone is estimated to account for £267 million of UK GVA and around 4,000 FTE jobs when its economic effects across the country are included.
But what matters to Caithness is how much of that activity stays relatively close to home.
Of the estimated 3,686 FTE jobs supported nationally by Dounreay, PwC estimates that 2,624 are located in Caithness and North Sutherland.
That is around 71% of the total employment impact.
This is a particularly important finding because Dounreay is now a decommissioning site rather than an operating nuclear power station.
The economic argument for Dounreay has therefore changed. Its importance is no longer based on generating electricity or developing Britain's nuclear programme. It is now based on the highly specialised work involved in dismantling the nuclear legacy, managing radioactive materials and dealing with some of the most difficult decommissioning challenges in the UK.
And that work is likely to continue for many years.
A warning as well as good news
There is another way of reading the report.
The figures demonstrate how important Dounreay remains to Caithness. They also demonstrate the potential economic risk if the site's activity eventually winds down without other sources of employment and investment taking its place.
PwC places Dounreay in the “high dependence, low strength” category in its assessment of local economies. The report says Highland scores relatively low on economic strength because of factors including earnings and employment, while Dounreay creates a relatively high level of local economic dependence.
That is not a prediction of what will happen to Caithness. It is an indication of the structure of the local economy today.
It also reinforces an argument that has been made in Caithness for many years: the area needs to capture new economic opportunities while Dounreay remains a major employer and source of spending.
The emerging energy economy, new grid infrastructure, offshore wind, nuclear-related work and other industrial developments could all potentially become part of that transition.
But the PwC figures show just how large the gap would be if those replacement opportunities did not materialise.
The figure that deserves attention
The £4.1 billion national figure will inevitably attract attention because it demonstrates the scale of the NDA's economic footprint across Britain.
For Caithness, however, the number to remember is 23%.
That is PwC's estimate of the proportion of jobs in Caithness and North Sutherland supported by Dounreay.
And the other figure is 19.9% – the estimated proportion of the area's GVA supported by the site.
Those numbers demonstrate that Dounreay is not simply another large employer on the edge of Caithness.
It remains one of the foundations of the local economy.
The challenge for the years ahead will be making sure that when the long decommissioning programme eventually comes to an end, Caithness has developed enough other economic activity to replace what Dounreay currently provides.
Source: Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Economic Impact Assessment of NDA Sites, prepared by PwC, published May 2026. The assessment is based on economic activity during the financial year ending March 2025.
Economic Impact Assessment of NDA Sites