Yorkshire and the Humber sees highest rate of job growth in UK

Yorkshire and the Humber was placed first in the NatWest Regional Economic Tracker, after seeing a higher rate of job growth than any other UK region in 2015.

Employment rose by 3.7% last year, almost twice the UK rate of 2%.

These results means there are now almost 5% more jobs than in 2008 and has pushed Yorkshire and the Humber up the long term rankings, bettered only by London and East of England. In addition, there has been a 6.2% surge in high-skilled jobs over the last year, more than offsetting a small fall in low skilled employment.

There are now 1.6 million more people working than there were in 2008, but they are not doing the same jobs as they were 8 years ago.

The strongest growth has been seen in highly skilled categories occupied by managers and professionals, expanding by 12.5% since 2008 and a very healthy 2.5% in the last 12 months.

Recent employment growth amongst medium skilled occupations has pushed job numbers back above their 2008 level. However, there are still fractionally fewer people employed in low skilled jobs than there 8 years ago.

The results also showcase the effects of technological changes on the labour market.

Greater use of technology is improving the efficiency of many retail operations, the replacement of check-out staff with automated tills is one of the most visible ways this is happening and has contributed to the number of people employed as cashiers falling by over 70,000 since 2008.

Yorkshire & the Humber and the North West have both seen high skilled employment grow by over 5% in the last 12 months, mainly due to the performances in cities such as Manchester and York, both of which have more high skilled employment than the UK average.

The strongest concentration of high skilled jobs are to be found in the university cities of Cambridge and Oxford. London and the South East has a strong of high skilled jobs, but last year both regions have had employment growth biased towards low skilled occupations with growth of over 4%.