How is the Portsmouth economy performing, and what are the key policy issues facing the city?
This factsheet compares Portsmouth to the five most similar European cities by size and industrial structure. These are: Vilnius (Lithuania), Göteborg (Sweden), Dortmund (Germany), Zaragoza (Spain), Nantes (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 Portsmouth to its European counterparts on variables such as skills, employment and productivity.
Portsmouth is a large city with a relatively large private services and public services sector.
Portsmouth ranks in the middle of the group on GVA per worker, with a small amount of variation between it and the top group performer. It also performs well on employment, but has a relatively low skilled population.