Profile of the West Midlands
Some facts and figures
An updated profile of creative media industries will be available shortly. In the meantime here is some information about the region taken from Skillset's research.
Around 5.3 million people live in the West Midlands region which includes Warwickshire, Herefordshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, the Black Country, Coventry, Birmingham and Solihull and Telford and the Wrekin. The city of Birmingham tends to dominate the audio visual industries in the West Midlands, both in terms of the number of companies and the size of the workforce.
Skillset's 2006 Census suggests there are around 6100 people working in the West Midlands representing 3% of the sector's UK workforce
The majority of audio visual companies based in the West Midlands are SMEs, with 59% having 1-25 staff.
The largest sub-sectors in the West Midlands region is Publishing with a workforce of 8370. Photo imaging (2700) Computer Games (1600) TV (1200) and Broadcast Radio (1000) are also all significant and active sectors.
Women represent around 34% of the workforce compared to 36% across the UK. Minority ethnic groups account for 7% of the workforce, slightly less than the national figure of 7.4% and 2% is reported as having a disability, compared to 5% UK-wide.
For more information on our research work, please visit Skillset's Research pages.
