How is the Southend economy performing, and what are the key policy issues facing the city?
This factsheet compares Southend to the five most similar European cities in size and industrial structure. These are: Alicante (Spain) Strasbourg (France) Malmö (Sweden) Thessaloniki (Greece) Bochum (Germany).
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 Southend to its European counterparts on variables such as skills, employment and productivity.
Southend is a medium-sized city with a fairly large private services and public services sector.
Southend performs well on employment rate, but tends to rank low against its group on other indicators.