Things can only get worse
I grew up in an area of Birmingham called Yardley, about three miles from the city centre. It was – and is - a largely indistinct area. A couple of Premiership footballers have come from there – Lee Carsley and Craig Gardner – and the boxer Frankie Gavin is a local boy, but there have been few other claims to fame. A solidly working class area, when I was growing up there in the 1970s it was mainly council houses and most of the men in the area worked in car factories, other factories or on building sites- but most people worked. Not any more. Research released this week by UK National Statistics rating unemployment levels by parliamentary constituency shows that Yardley now has the 12th highest total of jobless people in Britain.
More generally, the research makes grim reading for Birmingham and the wider West Midlands. Three of the four worst unemployment black spots are in Birmingham. Birmingham areas make up six of the top 20. Once Wolverhampton, West Bromwich and Walsall are added in, ten of the top 20 unemployment areas are in our patch.
Such statistics are a stark reminder of what a precarious position the locally economy is in. There is a danger, given the national picture, of thinking that we are all in the same economic boat. That’s not the case. The West Midlands boat has more holes in it. The problems here - high unemployment, low levels of GVA (an indicator of output), a low spend on research and development, poor skills levels, lots of jobs in low value manufacturing etc – weren’t caused by the recession but merely exacerbated by it.
And the unemployment misery is ethnically diverse. The country’s unemployment black spot is Birmingham Ladywood, which is a majority non-white area. But in second place is Birmingham Hodge Hill, which is a predominantly white area.
Local property entrepreneur Paul Bassi told Insider this month that there was a danger Birmingham could go the way of Detroit, the US city laid low by the decline of its manufacturing industry. I wouldn’t go as far as that, but it’s easy to see areas of the city polarising further with a vibrant city centre and affluent outer suburbs surrounding a ‘doughnut’ of deprivation in the inner cities and mid range suburbs. It has already happened to a large degree and given the bleak outlook for the economy over the next few years it is hard to see things improving.
Where are the future jobs for the people living in areas such as Yardley? The two big remaining car factories in the area - Jaguar at Castle Bromwich and Land Rover at Solihull - will be reduced to one over the next few years under JLR plans. If Castle Brom goes, areas such as Erdington, Hodge Hill, Stechford and Yardley will suffer even more.
It is going to take some seriously intelligent and innovative thinking for areas such as these to be revitalised and no small amount of investment cash. In other words, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.
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