There is considerable variation in the economic performance of cities and towns across the UK. The purpose of this chapter is to show the scale and nature of this variation by highlighting the performance of the 63 largest urban areas on 17 indicators covering:
Population
Employment
Productivity
Skills
Business dynamics
Housing
Innovation
Digital connectivity
Wages
Environment
For most indicators, tables of the 10 strongest and 10 weakest performing places are presented.
The national picture
The national economy clusters in cities and large towns.
Figure 11 shows that they account for 9 per cent of land but 63 per cent of output and 72 per cent of knowledge-based jobs in the private sector.
Figure 11: Cities as a share of the national total
There is a clear split in productivity across the county. All of the ten cities with higher productivity than the national average are in the South.
GVA per hour in the Greater South East was £44.10 in 2020. It is the only region that is more productive than the national average. GVA per hour in the rest of Great Britain was £33.60.
The Greater South East’s strong performance is led by its cities, where the average GVA per hour was 30 per cent higher than non-urban areas in the region.
However, cities in the rest of Britain were only 3 per cent more productive than non-urban areas. It is this underperformance that is the main cause of the wider underperformance of the economy outside of the Greater South East.
In 2021, 59 per cent of all private sector jobs were located in cities.
The number of private sector jobs increased faster in cities than in the rest of the country between 2020 and 2021 – 25 cities saw increases larger than the British average while 18 cities saw either a fall or no change.
Table 5: Private sector jobs growth
Rank
City
Change, 2020-21 (%)
Private sector jobs, 2020
Private sector jobs, 2021
Net job gains or losses
10 cities with the highest percentage change in private sector jobs
1
Aldershot
9.2
76,500
83,500
7,000
2
Middlesbrough
7.8
122,500
132,000
9,500
3
Birkenhead
7.2
62,500
67,000
4,500
4
Northampton
6.5
170,500
181,500
11,000
5
Newcastle
5.8
268,500
284,000
15,500
6
Manchester
5.3
931,000
980,500
49,500
7
Luton
5.0
69,500
73,000
3,500
8
Reading
4.9
154,000
161,500
7,500
9
Dundee
4.5
44,000
46,000
2,000
10
Telford
4.4
68,500
71,500
3,000
10 cities with the lowest percentage change in private sector jobs
53
Aberdeen
-0.9
117,000
116,000
-1,000
54
Swindon
-1.1
93,000
92,000
-1,000
55
Southend
-1.2
80,500
79,500
-1,000
56
Newport
-1.9
80,500
79,000
-1,500
57
Norwich
-2.5
101,000
98,500
-2,500
58
York
-3.2
78,000
75,500
-2,500
59
Preston
-4.2
132,000
126,500
-5,500
60
Gloucester
-4.4
45,000
43,000
-2,000
61
Crawley
-5.6
81,000
76,500
-4,500
62
Oxford
-5.7
61,000
57,500
-3,500
Great Britain
2.8
22,522,500
23,156,250
633,750
Public and private sector jobs
Table 6: Ratio of private sector to publicly-funded jobs
Rank
City
Private to public ratio, 2021
Private sector jobs, 2021
Publicly-funded jobs, 2021*
10 cities with the highest proportion of private sector jobs
1
Crawley
7.0
76,500
11,000
2
Slough
4.8
70,000
14,500
3
Warrington
4.1
116,500
28,500
4
Swindon
4.0
92,000
23,000
5
Reading
3.8
161,500
42,000
6
Aldershot
3.8
83,500
22,000
7
London
3.5
4,715,000
1,336,000
8
Milton Keynes
3.5
140,000
40,500
9
Telford
3.4
71,500
21,000
10
Northampton
3.4
181,500
54,000
10 cities with the lowest proportion of private sector jobs
53
Blackburn
1.8
47,000
25,500
54
Plymouth
1.8
75,500
42,000
55
Swansea
1.7
102,500
59,000
56
Liverpool
1.7
220,500
129,500
57
Birkenhead
1.7
67,000
40,000
58
Exeter
1.5
59,000
39,500
59
Cambridge
1.5
67,000
46,000
60
Worthing
1.5
29,000
20,000
61
Dundee
1.4
46,000
32,000
62
Oxford
0.9
57,500
61,000
Great Britain
2.8
23,156,250
8,235,525
Innovation
The ‘new economy’ encompasses emerging knowledge-intensive sectors like FinTech and advanced manufacturing that are at the forefront of new technologies and innovations. Their performance is important for the UK’s productivity and prosperity because they are at the frontier of the economy and the number of new economy firms in a city serves as a proxy for measuring levels of innovation across the UK.
The new economy tends to cluster in cities, and city centres in particular. Cities accounted for only 9 per cent of land in the UK, but were home to 59 per cent of new economy firms in 2022. City centres are even more concentrated centres of the new economy: they accounted for 0.1 per cent of land in the UK, but were home to 13 per cent of the new economy.
However, the distribution of new economy firms is uneven – 48 per cent of these firms were located in cities in the Greater South East, and 7 of the 10 cities with the largest numbers of new economy firms per population are in the Greater South East.
Table 7: New economy firms per 10,000 working age population
Rank
City
Business stock per 10,000 population, 2021
Top 10 New Economy Firms per 10,000 working age pop
1
Cambridge
40.1
2
Reading
35.1
3
Milton Keynes
33.8
4
London
30.8
5
Aldershot
27.7
6
Brighton
27.7
7
Oxford
27.1
8
Cardiff
26.2
9
Bristol
25.4
10
Exeter
25.2
Bottom 10 New Economy Firms per 10,000 working age pop
54
Liverpool
12.6
55
Middlesbrough
12.6
56
Doncaster
12.3
57
Mansfield
11.8
58
Swansea
11.8
59
Plymouth
11.8
60
Newport
11.3
61
Wigan
11.3
62
Barnsley
11.2
63
Sunderland
11.0
United Kingdom
20.7
Figure 15: New economy firms per 10,000 working age population, 2022
The average weekly wage in cities was £661 in 2022 – higher than the UK average of £621. However, this was the result of a strong performance of a small number of cities – just 16 cities had an average weekly wage that was above the UK average.
There is also a clear North-South divide in earnings: no city in the North had an average weekly wage higher than the UK average and the average weekly wage in the South was 22 per cent higher than in the North.
That said, while many cities lag the national average, a number of them lead their regional averages. Cities such as Belfast, Cardiff, York and Newcastle are examples of this. This underscores the importance of cities in their regional contexts even if they underperform
in the national context.
Table 8: Average workplace earnings
Rank
City
Average Weekly Earnings 2022 (£)
10 cities with the highest average weekly earnings 2022
1
London
828
2
Slough
797
3
Crawley
744
4
Reading
726
5
Cambridge
697
6
Aldershot
681
7
Milton Keynes
678
8
Edinburgh
661
9
Aberdeen
658
10
Bristol
655
10 cities with the lowest average weekly earnings 2022
55
Leeds
535
56
Mansfield
528
57
Birkenhead
525
57
Sunderland
525
59
Doncaster
524
60
Stoke
523
61
Plymouth
516
62
Southend
515
63
Burnley
512
United Kingdom
621
Figure 16: Average weekly workplace earnings by region, 2022 (£)
Cities are on average greener than the rest of the country. They accounted for 54 per cent of the total population but only 45 per cent of the UK’s total CO2 emissions in 2020. Average UK emissions per capita in 2020 totalled 4.6 tonnes while the city average was lower at 3.8 tonnes.
This in part is because cities account for low shares, relative to their share of population, of the two principal contributors to the UK’s carbon emissions – transport emissions and industry emissions. They were the source of 44 per cent of transport emissions and 37 per cent of industry emissions.
Swansea has much higher per capita emissions than any other city because of its industrial emissions – likely linked to the steel plant at Port Talbot. On a per capita basis, its industrial emissions were 16.2 tonnes per head in 2020, compared to the UK average of 1 tonne.
Table 17: Total CO2 emissions per capita
Rank
City
CO2 emissions per capita, 2020 (t)
CO2 emissions per capita, 2019 (t)
10 cities with the lowest emissions per capita
1
Worthing
2.5
2.8
2
Ipswich
2.7
2.9
3
Brighton
2.7
3.0
4
Chatham
2.7
3.0
5
Luton
2.8
3.1
6
Exeter
2.8
3.2
7
Southend
2.8
3.1
8
Coventry
3.0
3.4
9
Bournemouth
3.0
3.4
10
Southampton
3.0
3.4
10 cities with the highest emissions per capita
54
Belfast
4.7
4.9
55
Wakefield
4.8
5.8
56
Preston
4.9
5.4
57
Peterborough
5.0
5.5
58
Newport
5.1
5.8
59
Northampton
5.2
5.9
60
Doncaster
5.5
6.1
61
Warrington
5.6
6.4
62
Middlesbrough
9.8
10.9
63
Swansea
19.4
21.0
United Kingdom
4.6
5.1
Figure 23: CO2 emissions per capita, 2019 - 2020 (t)
