The West Midlands has around 44,000 passenger transport employees, with the majority working in the bus and coach, taxi and private hire industry.  Employees working in the aviation industry are mainly located at Birmingham International Airport.  However, since the commercial launch of Coventry airport in 2004, some employees are based in Coventry.

15% of the workforce in the region is female.  16% of the bus and coach workforce is female.  The West Midlands has the second highest percentage of Pakistani and Bangladeshi (11%) workforce of all regions.  The region has the oldest employees with an average age of 46.1 years.

Key statistics:

• 47% of the workforce have an NVQ Level 2
• 13% have no qualifications
• 24% of companies have vacancies, of which 65% are hard-to-fill
• 2.7% of Jobcentre Plus vacancies are in the sector, which is relatively high
• only 3% of companies report retention problems
• 17% report skills gaps
• high proportion of skills gaps are amongst professionals
• skills gaps are reported for customer handling, oral communication and team working and problem solving and skills
• 21% of companies provide training for their employees
• 16% found that there was a lack of funding available for training
• 16% report a lack of suitable courses in the local area

Priorities for the region include:

• plans to add a second runway at Birmingham International airport
• expansion of Midland metro light rail tram
• increase in number of journeys by bus
• development Birmingham New Street station
• development of red routes to improve traffic flow
• development of Coventry Rapid Transit system
• trialling variable speed system on M42

For more detailed passenger transport priorities in the region go to the GoSkills West Midlands Regional fact sheet (2006).

Source:  GoSkills regional fact sheet 2006, GoSkills Skills Needs Assessment (stage 1) 2006a and GoSkills Priority issues for passenger transport sector (SSA III) 2007

For more regional data see: