A decade ago the city was languishing at the bottom of tables for graduate retention, qualifications and deprivation – but it is all changing as more people, companies and jobs arrive – and stay – in the city
A decade ago the city was languishing at the bottom of tables for graduate retention, qualifications and deprivation – but it is all changing as more people, companies and jobs arrive – and stay – in the city
00:01, 09 Feb 2026
When looking at how Liverpool is turning around its economic fortunes, there are a couple of statistics that stand out. In 2013, the city had the lowest employment rate of any UK city at 61%, today that figure stands at 71%, far closer to the UK average.
But as the recent Centre for Cities Cities Outlook report states, it is the speed of that turnaround that is most impressive. The rise has been twice that of the urban average across the country.
At the same time, as the report highlights, the share of Liverpool’s residents who have no formal qualifications has halved from 15% in 2013 to below 8% in 2024. Liverpool is now only outperformed by Coventry in this metric.
Perhaps most importantly for a city that has struggled with poverty for so long, Liverpool has seen the greatest reduction in neighbourhood income deprivation of any city in the UK, with the share of neighbourhoods classed in the most income deprived in the country falling nine percentage points between 2010 and 2025 (from 57 to 48%).
One area that has seen a vital improvement in the city concerns the number of graduates that are staying here after finishing their studies at the city’s high-flying universities.
In 2022, this Liverpool ECHO special report raised concerns about the ‘brain drain’ of talented graduates who had fallen in love with the city and wanted to stay being unable to find the career paths they wanted and leaving for Manchester, London and elsewhere.
But just four years later, that has all changed. The Think Orion think tank now classes Liverpool in third place in the country for graduates studying and then staying put, behind only London and Manchester.
Local leaders have been explaining for some time that Liverpool has needed to move beyond its impressive culture and hospitality offering – which has been the driving force in powering the city’s renaissance since the difficult economic and social challenges of the 1980s and 90s, but which cannot alone improve economic fortunes.
A major focus has been placed on the city’s key growth areas of life sciences, tech, advanced manufacturing, AI and digital and creative. A number of recent announcements appear to show these efforts are seriously bearing fruit and creating the kind of opportunities that will convince people to move to Liverpool – or remain here – to build their careers and lives.
In January. one of China’s leading vehicle manufacturers, Chery Commercial Vehicle announced that it would be creating its first ever European headquarters here in Liverpool, bringing jobs, research and investment to the city’s already impressive automotive sector.
Shortly after this, Indian AI company Aivion confirmed it has based its own new European HQ in Liverpool city centre’s Central Tech building.
And last week, the University of Liverpool confirmed an exciting new partnership with Boston-based AI biopharma firm BPGbio, inc which aims to harness large-scale healthcare data in a bid to accelerate the development of important new treatments.
And in May last year, American multinational Kyndyl launched its new state-of-the-art AI lab in one of the city’s most famous structures, The Liver Building – hoping to create 1,000 software and engineering jobs over the next few years.
There are many others including University of Latvia medical technology spinout Sepsiscan, Swiss-Dutch AI firm 4POS and Welsh materials firm Plantsea, who have all set up new bases in Liverpool in the last year.
A number of these firms are basing themselves in Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter, a 450-acre innovation district in the city centre that is home to some world-leading centres in science, health, technology and – through the universities – education.
Knowledge Quarter Chief executive Colin Sinclair arrived in Liverpool exactly 10 years ago to set up and lead the project and as a symbol of its success, he has just returned from France after celebrating Liverpool’s third-place finish in the rankings for the European Capital of Innovation.
Speaking to the ECHO, Colin said: “It was a massive achievement to come third, no UK city has ever been European Capital of Innovation and we came third at a point where we have left the European Union. So this is incredible.
“When we were out in France, people just love Liverpool. The good will towards the city is huge. And it is not just The Beatles and football, everyone is talking about Liverpool and innovation.”
“They all knew about the Knowledge Quarter innovation district. It is so well known as an example of what you can achieve by harnessing the power of universities and research. Virtually every city we go to, people want to come and see what we are doing in Liverpool.”
“It takes a while for these things to happen, but we do really now have credibility and momentum. The economy is tough for everyone but in terms of Liverpool as a city and the wider city region, there is a lot of confidence.”
Speaking about the driving factors in the city’s recent growth, he added: “Liverpool is a city regenerated on culture, tourism and the visitor economy since that pivotal turning point of Capital of Culture in 2008. It became such a cool city because of this that everyone wanted to come to university here and those universities grew significantly.
“The research element of the university then grew and grew and now it is finally starting to attract all these innovative companies to come to Liverpool. The mission is now starting to come true.”
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram, who was directly involved in bringing the likes of BPGbio and Kyndyl thanks to a trade mission to the States in 2024, said the city and wider city region’s reputation as a place to invest has changed dramatically.
He told the ECHO: “If you go back just a decade and have a look at where we were, there were some really institutionalised issues that we had to tackle. One of them was around our reputation. The reputation for Liverpool and the city region weren’t great.
“We have now been able to convince people that the stuff we are doing here is real, tangible and investible.
“If you look at the economic indicators, all of them for the first time in generations are going in the right direction. We haven’t closed the gap on the national averages on all of them but many of them are taking significant strides to get us at least to national averages and in some cases way above that.
“We are now starting to see the shiny buildings, the new jobs, the improving incomes and falling unemployment and all the innovation that is happening. It bodes well for us.
He added: “This all means that when I am speaking to investors, as I did this week, the big companies, pension funds and those high wealth organisations, you can actually say we are not just one of the fastest improving city regions economically but we are one of the fastest growing economies in the country.”
“In the past it would have been unfathomable to say that. What we need now is for more people to feel the improvements and I get that not every person or every area is feeling that. We are trying to ensure we take everyone with us and provide opportunities for people.”
Mayor Rotheram and his team have moved to position the city region as a leader in AI, being the first combined authority to appoint a regional AI officer in Tiffany St James.
He said: “We know that there are potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be created through AI. People will worry about dangers and job losses of course. I think there will be job changes but there should be net more jobs created because of all the possibilities AI opens up.
“Seven years ago we put in the fibre optic cables called LCR Connect, which is now over 400km of dark fibre in the ground, connecting to the super computer in our city region. At the other end the cables link the UK with north America. That’s a great benefit for companies who want to be innovative and it is why we are seeing so many companies coming into the city region.”
“This is also about creating jobs and keeping people here who have got those brilliant skills that they developed through qualifications in our universities.
“We’ve gone from the bottom ten places for graduate retention in the country to the top three in less than ten years. This is because we are creating those good, highly skilled, well paid jobs and more of those people who are coming out of our brilliant universities are deciding to stay here and that’s because of the jobs mixed with the brilliant cultural offer we have here.”
