Greater Birmingham and Solihull is home to one of the largest professional and financial centres outside of London as well as growing creative and cultural industries, a leading advanced manufacturing base, and emerging employment clusters in life sciences and digital technologies. Five universities and nine further education (FE) colleges are in the area, which it is also the location of choice for international companies such as Cadbury, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC,  and Jaguar Land Rover.

Nearly 25% of jobs in Greater Birmingham and Solihull are in public administration, education, and healthcare.

Birmingham City Council is one of the largest public sector employers in the UK and a wide range of hospitals, universities and colleges mean that Birmingham and Solihull still retain many public sector jobs. More civil jobs are also expected to come to Birmingham in 2022/23 after the opening of new offices by the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Finance, business admin & professional services (inc. ICT) is the largest employment sector (over 268,000 jobs or 28% of employment). All the Big Four consultancy firms - PwC, Deloitte, EY and KPMG - have an office in the city and run competitive graduate and apprenticeship programmes. HSBC headquarters are located in Birmingham, the Deutsche Bank also runs its ‘front-of-office’ activities from the city and Goldman Sachs recently opened an office in Birmingham.

Greater Birmingham and Solihull hosts a strong creative and cultural sector with a focus on performance - theatre, dance and music - and the largest jewellery and crafts cluster in the UK. The area also has a large marketing, design and broadcasting sector with emerging strengths in high-end film & TV production and growing expertise in next generation content creation and virtual and augmented reality.

Other large employment sectors include retail (14.8% of jobs) and manufacturing (8%). 

Advanced manufacturing & engineering services, health technologies & life sciences, and low carbon & green technologies are key local growth sectors that are growing and creating high-skilled jobs.

Greater Birmingham & Solihull has a track record for attracting foreign direct investment and there is a strong pipeline of capital investments across the area to create jobs, improve transport links, build houses, and upskill people.

• HS2 alone is forecast to create around 8,600 construction jobs with the potential to support a further 22,000 new jobs in the West Midlands.

Last Updated: 18 September 2023