About the West Midlands

Did You Know?

The West Midlands covers an area of 13,000 square kilometres, including Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city, and 17 towns and cities with populations over 100,000, population. The population of the West Midlands is 5.3 million people.

The West Midlands region sits at the hub of the national motorway network and has the second highest proportion of the workforce (26 per cent) employed in manufacturing in the UK.
It is also Europe's largest centre for the manufacture of ceramics (the British Ceramics Confederation is based in Stoke) and has the largest concentration of rubber and plastics companies in the country.

The West Midlands region has a population of 5.3 million. Birmingham, the region's biggest city, has slightly fewer than one million inhabitants, making it the second largest city in the UK.
The borough of Birmingham is part of an urban area, which also includes Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton. The region also includes the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, as well as the urbanised areas of Stoke-on-Trent, Telford and Wrekin.

The area is geographically, industrially and culturally diverse. In fact, the West Midlands is the most ethnically diverse area outside of London with 20% of the population belonging to a Black Minority Ethnic (BME). This rises to 29.9% in the Birmingham area (Office for National Statistics, 2002). Figures relating to disability are not as robust, but an estimation based on the Annual Population Survey would put the population of disabled people in the region 20%.

The West Midlands economic growth is less than London, the South East, and East of
England regions, but is on par with or, slightly ahead of, the East Midlands, North West, Yorkshire and Humber regions.

Source: Advantage West Midlands