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Workforce
Skilled and Growing Workforce
The craftsmanship of Staffordshire workers is legendary. From the skilful hands that paint world-famous pottery, to the precision engineers making JCB diggers and Jaguar Land Rover engines.
But it’s the sheer scale of our workforce that is really impressive. With a large local workforce and the ability to attract workers from a wider area gives you the comfort of knowing that your business can scale up and grow here.
The statistics are compelling:
- One of the UK’s largest labour pools
- Workforce within a 45 minute drivetime is equivalent to those of Manchester and Birmingham
- 1 million people living here and 3 million within an hour’s drive
- Strong manufacturing workforce with a very high concentration of engineering skills
- Potential salary savings of 18.5% against the national average
- Population growth significantly higher than regional and national averages
- Within 1 hour’s drivetime of 32 Universities
Source: East West Locations
Skills development is a priority for us and we work closely with local businesses on apprenticeships and work-place training. For graduate recruitment, Keele University (http://www.keele.ac.uk/) and Staffordshire University (http://www.staffs.ac.uk/) have more than 25,000 students in key subjects like engineering, IT, science, technology and medicine. Our colleges have seen huge investment and play a major role in providing local companies with the right skills. Another 30 universities are within an hour’s drive including world-class institutions in Manchester, Birmingham, Warwick, Nottingham, Liverpool, Sheffield and Leicester.
We provide a free support service to advise you on recruitment, skills and training issues; and can help you to benchmark salary levels in your particular industry.