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Birmingham: Economy

Five Ways in Birmingham. Image by Chris Ward under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 License

Overview Economy: Birmingham has a GDP of around £92 billion, greater than many middle-ranking countries such as Singapore, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In terms of GDP, it is the 2nd richest city in the UK and the 72nd richest in the world.

 Birmingham was once a metal-bashing town whose wealth originated in the mediaeval forges powered by the streams that drained off the Birmingham Ridge. There are still a surprisingly large number of metal-bashing workshops turning out trinkets such as jewellery, keyrings, medallions, even swords, but overall manufacturing has declined.

Indeed, the only manufacturing plant with a workforce of 1,000+ is Cadbury in Bournville. There are still some medium-sized manufacturers, employing staffs of several hundred, that mainly produce parts for the auto/aero industries, but there are now barely seventy factories with a staff of over 80.

Manufacturing has diminished as the service sector has boomed. The regional headquarters of several banks, insurance companies and law firms are based in Birmingham which also accounts for around 50% of the UK conference and hospitality trade.

Birmingham is also a major transport hub with a huge logistics sector whilst the Bullring is the busiest retail mall in the UK with an annual footfall of 40 million.

Birmingham is also a major administrative centre with the largest city council in Europe and a major centre for education, medicine, research and technology with three universities and ten general and specialist hospitals.

Deprivation, Worklessness and Major Employers:  The shift away from manual industrial jobs to highly-skilled service employment has resulted in mass unemployment amongst the unskilled and semi-skilled population. The average workless rate (economically inactive of working age) in Birmingham is 23%.

This website contains information about major employers, deprivation and worklessness in all 40 council wards in Birmingham: