How is the Doncaster economy performing, and what are the key policy issues facing the city?
This factsheet compares Doncaster to the five most similar European cities in size and industrial structure. These are: Thessaloniki (Greece), Alicante (Spain), Tours (France), Rouen (France) and Mulhouse (France).
Comparing cities in this way helps us to understand more about how well UK cities are competing on an international scale because it groups cities with similar industrial structures, rather than on their resulting economic performance. The factsheet also compares the relative strengths and weaknesses of Doncaster to its European counterparts on variables such as skills, employment and productivity.
Doncaster sits within a group of medium-sized cities with a relatively large private services base but a slightly smaller business services base.
Doncaster ranks highly for employment compared to its European counterparts, but tends to perform less well among other indicators. It has a high proportion of low-skilled people, and has among the lowest GVA per worker across all cities analysed.