North West sees marked increase in self-employment

The North West’s entrepreneurial spirit continues to create new jobs across the region, according to new data.

The latest Regional Economic Tracker from NatWest, which monitors employment levels in 11 areas of the UK each quarter to find where the fastest job growth has occurred, showed that the North West saw its job count rise by 2.5% in the last year.

During the same period, the North West also reported a 4.5% rise in self-employment.

In Manchester, the proportion of jobs done by the self-employed increased to 13%. In the city’s Yorkshire counterpart, Leeds, that figure stood at 11.8%.

Across the UK as a whole, self-employment has risen by 21.1% since 2008, with around 14.7% of all jobs now attributable to self-employment.

This increase has changed the nature of the UK economy, especially for women.

The number of women who are self-employed has grown by more than 40% during the last eight years, with women now accounting for 54% of the rise in self-employment.

Sebastian Burnside, a senior economist with NatWest, said of the findings: Entrepreneurs are making a fantastically important contribution to the UK’s labour market.

“There are now 4.6m self-employed people in the UK, an increase of 800k since 2008 with women accounting for 433,000 of these new jobs.”

He continued: “Over the course of the recovery, we have seen the pace of self-employment growth vary. At the beginning in 2009 and 2010, self-employment was growing rapidly even as firms were shedding jobs.

“However, with employers once again recruiting workers and unemployment levels now below 5%, we are starting to see the growth of employee jobs outstrip self-employment’s expansion in some parts of the UK.”

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