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This report delivers evidence-based and practical recommendations on how to better support employment and economic development in England. It builds on sub-national data analysis and consultations with local stakeholders in Nottingham and North Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands as well as Hull and Scarborough in Yorkshire and the Humber. It provides a comparative framework to understand the role of the local level in contributing to more and better quality jobs. The report can help national and local policy makers in England and the UK build effective and sustainable partnerships at the local level, which join-up efforts and achieve stronger outcomes across employment, training, and economic development policies. Co-ordinated policies can help workers find suitable jobs, while also stimulating entrepreneurship and productivity, which increases the quality of life and prosperity within a community as well as throughout the country.

England (and the rest of the UK) was hit hard by the economic crisis, which had a disproportionate impact on certain groups of people and on certain regions. While unemployment did not rise to levels first feared, concerns about worklessness remain – especially among young people and those with poor skills who face particular challenges in building labour market success. The UK economy has returned to sustained but uneven growth, and there are ongoing concerns about the quality of jobs that are available, the rise of more temporary and precarious work and shrinking incomes as pay rises fail to keep up with inflation. Going forward, it is clear that a policy emphasis on the creation of quality jobs will be a key route towards ensuring that everyone can take advantage of a return to economic growth and its associated opportunities.

To better understand the role of the local level in contributing to job creation and productivity, this review examined local activities in four areas in England – two from each of two regions: (1) Nottingham; and (2) North Nottinghamshire; (from the East Midlands); and (3) Hull; and (4) Scarborough; (from Yorkshire and the Humber). This chapter provides a labour market and economic overview of each area as well as the results from an OECD LEED statistical tool which looks at the relationship between skills supply and demand at the sub-national level.

This chapter provides an overview of England’s skills system and the institutional infrastructure and polices for local economic development. The UK economy is heavily services based both in output and employment. In recent decades there has been a marked shift in the UK economy away from manufacturing towards services – particularly towards knowledge intensive services. Historically, national skills policy in England has had a supply-side focus, with the underpinning rationale being to raise skills levels as a means to achieve higher levels of employment, productivity and prosperity. With increasing recognition that a supply-side focus was insufficient, growing policy attention has been placed on stimulating employer demand for skills.

Stimulating job creation at the local level requires integrated actions across employment, training, and economic development portfolios. Co-ordinated placebased policies can help workers find suitable jobs, while also contributing to demand by stimulating productivity. This requires flexible policy management frameworks, information, and integrated partnerships which leverage the efforts of local stakeholders. This chapter outlines the key recommendations emerging from the review of local job creation policies in England.

The Local Job Creation project involves a series of country reviews in Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Czech Republic, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy (Autonomous Province of Trento), Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland and this study of England) and the United States (California and Michigan). The key stages of each review are summarised in Box 1.

This chapter highlights findings from the local job creation dashboard in England. The findings are discussed through the four thematic areas of the OECD review: (1) better aligning policies and programmes to local employment development; (2) adding value through skills; (3) targeting policy to local employment sectors and investing in quality jobs; and (4) being inclusive.

Across the OECD, policy-makers are grappling with a critical question: how to create jobs? The recent financial crisis and economic downturn has had serious consequences across most OECD countries, with rising unemployment rates and jobs being lost across many sectors. Indeed, for some countries, the effects the downturn brought with it are continuing, if not amplifying. Shrinking public budgets in some countries also mean that policy makers must now do more with less. In this context, it is necessary to think laterally about how actions in one area, such as employment and training, can have simultaneous benefits in others, such as creating new jobs and better supporting labour market inclusion.