How is the Sunderland economy performing, and what are the key policy issues facing the city?
This factsheet compares Sunderland to the five most similar European cities in size and industrial structure. These are: Szczecin (Poland) Mulhouse (France) Gdansk (Poland) Bielefeld (Germany) Tours (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 Sunderland to its European counterparts on variables such as skills, employment and productivity.
Sunderland is a medium sized city with a large private services and public services sector. It’s manufacturing sector is also relatively large compared to other UK cities.
Sunderland tends to rank in the bottom half of its group, though it is in the middle range for jobs and employment. It has the highest proportion of low skilled people in the group.