Who gets nothing at Christmas: what 500 UK workers told us

Most of what gets written about Christmas gifting is about what to give. A hamper! A voucher! A bottle of something! This is... not that. We surveyed 500 UK working adults about what their employer gives them at Christmas, and the interesting finding isn't what people get. It's who gets nothing. This piece sits alongside the Christmas Gift Index, our free report on how UK companies actually gift at Christmas.

Quick answer: 31% of UK working adults say their employer gives them nothing at all at Christmas. And the gap isn't really about pay, it's about the shape of the workforce you sit in. In financial and professional services, 14.8% get nothing. In the education sector it's 41.2%, in healthcare and social care 36.5%, in retail and hospitality 35.4%. Part-timers get nothing 37.9% of the time against 28.4% of full-timers. If your company has both an office population and a shift-based or deskless one, the odds are the office half is being thanked and the other half isn't.

Nearly a third of UK workers get nothing

Huggg asked 500 UK working adults what their employer gives them at Christmas. They could pick more than one thing - here's what we found out:

• A party or event: 33% (163 people)
• Nothing at all: 31% (153 people)
• A gift card or voucher: 27% (136 people)
• A gift: 22% (110 people)

"Nothing" is the second most common answer. Not a rubbish gift, not a disappointing hamper. Nothing. Oof... that's not very Christmassy.

That's worth sitting with, because the conversation in most People teams is about what to give. For roughly a third of the workforce the question never gets that far.

The gap is between sectors, not salaries

This is the finding Huggg didn't expect, and it's the one that's probably the most unfair...

We asked people which industry they work in, then looked at the proportion who say they get nothing. We're only showing sectors with at least 50 respondents, because anything thinner isn't worth putting a percentage on:

• Education: 41.2% get nothing (n=68)
• Healthcare and social care: 36.5% (n=74)
• Retail and hospitality: 35.4% (n=82)
• Financial and professional services: 14.8% (n=61)

That's nearly a threefold gap between the two ends, and both ends are statistically significant against the rest of the sample. The middle two are clearly in the same direction, but on these bases we can't call either one a proven gap on its own, so treat them as a ranking rather than a finding.

Employment status tells the same story. Part-timers get nothing 37.9% of the time (n=116), against 28.4% of full-timers (n=384).

The obvious explanation is that it's really about money, and that the sectors at the top of that list just pay less. But we checked, and income on its own showed no effect at all. Nor does it explain financial services sitting at a third of the education sector's rate.

What the list actually tracks is workforce shape. The sectors where most people are on a shift, on a ward, in a classroom or on a shop floor are the sectors where most people get nothing. The one where most people are at a desk is the one where almost everyone gets something.

We can't tell you why from this data, and the likeliest explanation isn't that anyone is being deliberately excluded. It's that gifting budgets tend to follow office-based, salaried, head-office populations, because that's who the process was built around. Everyone else is harder to reach, so they quietly drop off the list.

Which is the bit worth acting on if you're a mixed business. Plenty of companies have both: a head office and a network of sites, or a salaried core and a large shift-based operation. This data compares sectors rather than teams inside one employer, so we can't prove the same split happens within your business. But if the pattern across 500 people is that desk-based workforces get thanked and deskless ones don't, it's worth checking whether your own send reached both halves, because nobody sets out to run it that way.

One thing we're not claiming: the people getting nothing aren't less likely to feel valued when something does arrive. We tested that too, and there's no trend whatsoever. The gap is in whether anything arrives, not in how people feel about what does. That distinction matters.

What to actually do with this

If this data is a prompt for anything useful, it's to check the distribution rather than the gesture.

1. Count who got nothing last time. Not what you sent, who it reached. Most teams have never run this number and it's usually worse than expected
2. Check it against your shift and site data. If the people who got nothing cluster in one depot, one shift pattern or one job family, you've found the problem
3. Make the reachable thing the default. If a gesture needs a home address or an evening free, some of your team can't receive it. Something that arrives by email or phone reaches everyone the same day
4. Keep it inside £50 per person and it's a tax-free trivial benefit with nothing to report. Our guide to employee gifts and tax has the conditions

Huggg exists for the third point. You set a budget, everyone chooses their own gift from 700+ brands, and it goes out as a link, so the person on shift in Leeds gets it at the same moment as the person at the party. There's nothing to post and no addresses to collect, which is usually what quietly decides who gets left out. Our piece on gifting a team without addresses covers the mechanics.

Method

Huggg surveyed 500 UK working adults via Pollfish in August 2026 (survey id 395593628), asking what their employer gives them at Christmas, which industry they work in, whether they had any say in the gift, what they did with it and how it made them feel about their employer. Because the question asks about what an employer gives rather than a single named year, read these as current practice rather than a snapshot of one Christmas. Figures are unweighted and respondent-reported. Bases are given alongside every cut above, sector cuts below 50 respondents aren't reported, and where a difference isn't statistically significant we've said so rather than reporting it as a finding. Sector comparisons use a two-proportion test against the rest of the sample.

The fuller analysis, including what people did with what they were given and how choices split by budget band, is in the Christmas Gift Index, our free and ungated report. If you want a specific cut of this data for a piece you're writing, get in touch and we'll pull it.

Frequently asked questions

How many UK employees get nothing from their employer at Christmas?

Huggg's 2026 survey of 500 UK working adults found that 31%, or 153 people, say their employer gives them nothing at all at Christmas. It was the second most common answer, behind a party or event at 33%.

Which industries are least likely to give employees anything at Christmas?

In Huggg's 2026 survey, the education sector had the highest proportion getting nothing at 41.2%, followed by healthcare and social care at 36.5% and retail and hospitality at 35.4%. Financial and professional services was lowest at 14.8%. The two ends of that range are statistically significant against the rest of the sample. Only sectors with at least 50 respondents are reported.

Are part-time workers less likely to get a Christmas gift?

On this data, yes. 37.9% of part-time workers say they get nothing at Christmas, against 28.4% of full-time workers.

Is it just that lower-paying sectors give less?

No. Income on its own showed no effect in the Huggg data, and it doesn't explain financial and professional services sitting at roughly a third of the education sector's rate. What the pattern tracks is workforce shape: sectors where most people work a shift, a ward, a classroom or a shop floor are the sectors where most people get nothing.

Do employees prefer cash to a gift?

The Huggg data doesn't answer this reliably. Cash scored higher than a gift in raw terms, but the difference isn't statistically significant (p=0.24), so we wouldn't make that claim and would be cautious about anyone who does using these figures.

Where can I read the full Huggg Christmas gifting data?

The full analysis is published in the Christmas Gift Index, Huggg's free and ungated report combining this 500-person survey with our own 2025 Christmas redemption data. It covers what people did with what they were given, and how gift choices split by budget band.