Reading beats off the competition when it comes to factors that attract skilled staff

26th January 2024

High wages, access to housing and career opportunities are key success points

The annual economic health check for Britain’s 63 largest urban areas highlights Reading as one of the best places to live and work in the UK.

A combination of the third highest job growth, fourth highest productivity, third highest wages and third highest growth in housing supply makes Reading a good bet to both develop a career and get onto the housing ladder, according to the Cities Outlook 2024 produced by Centre for Cities. The report also compares housing affordability with Reading ranking as a more affordable place to buy a home relative to wages than many of its competitor cities such as Oxford, Brighton, Cambridge, Bournemouth and Bristol, according to the report.

Nigel Horton-Baker, Chief Executive of REDA, Reading’s Economy and Destination Agency, said: “The report demonstrates that Reading has the perfect combination of economic factors to attract a skilled workforce and relocating businesses with the promise of high wages, job growth particularly in the private sector, skilled employment opportunities in knowledge-intensive businesses and the most relatively affordable place to get on the housing ladder of all the major tech cities in the UK with one of the highest investments in local housing stock.”

“Against both short-term and longer-term growth measures in the report, Reading demonstrates that it has a track record of economic success and 2024 promises even more. The completion of Shinfield Studios, the opening of new office space at One Station Hill and the delivery of major town centre housing developments should mean that 2024 and beyond will be boom time for a real 21^st century boom town.”

The Cities Outlook 2024 report compares the 63 largest urban areas in the UK against a number of economic factors. The report looked at both the current economic health of the 63 urban areas by analysing the latest economic data as well as the economic success since 2010. Reading scored strongly against both measures with job growth and productivity outperforming most competitor cities 2010-22 as well as ranking in the top 10 cities for many of the report’s most recent data sets.

Reading scored highly among 10 of the report’s key indicators:-

In addition, the report also highlighted the healthy growth of the population (+12.6% 2010-22) giving Reading the 6^th highest population growth.

The report is available at https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/cities-outlook-2024/