Up to £4m of European Development Fund money which is coming to Bradford could create 1,500 jobs, and a further 850 jobs could be created at the new Princes plant in the city. Jim Greenhalf looks at the employment trends for Bradford.

First the bad news. The strength of the pound on foreign exchanges, uncertainty over interest rates, and the state of Far Eastern economies are causing nervousness in certain sectors of the local economy.

David Wilkinson, chief executive of Bradford's Training and Enterprise Council, said up to 1,000 textile workers are known to be on short-time working.

Whereas only one-in-eight of Bradford's 10,000-plus companies exports, 73,000 of the district's 181,000 workforce are involved in export transactions - providing goods or services to firms which do export.

But while the increased cost of exporting, which also affects Bradford's important chemicals industry, is serious, Mr Wilkinson believes the underlying strength of the economy nationally will win through.

In other words he is not expecting an employment crisis to batter Bradford as happened in the early 1980s when thousands of engineering jobs vanished.

"Bradford has outplayed other areas in terms of its economic strength. That's been very encouraging," he said.

Trouble is, the expansion of the European Union from 12 to 15 States means that in future 30 per cent less regional and social development cash will be coming to Britain.

Yorkshire West Euro MP Barry Seal told the T&A: "More than £200m has come to Bradford from Europe since 1979. But Bradford and Keighley have lost their priority Objective II status which at one time covered all the district. Now Bradford could lose what little of it remains. In cash terms that's about £10m a year.

"In the next ten years Bradford has got to plan ahead but not rely on Europe. We have got to be making plans with the Government instead."

The good news is that between October 1987 and October 1997 unemployment in Bradford has halved from 10.9 per cent (26,116 men and women) to below 5.7 per cent (13,390). Statistics supplied by the TEC show a fall of 2,000 for the May to October 1997 period alone.

The number of people in work is expected to grow from 181,000 now to more than 190,000 by the year 2011, a third of whom will be in the 45-to-retirement age group - Bradford's fastest growing sector of the workforce.

Importantly, the downward fall on the unemployment graph has been crossed by upward trend in job creation.

The TEC's recently-published Economic Survey identified a number of growth areas: electronics and Information Technology, motor components, financial and business services, tourism, leisure and culture, environmental technology, call centres and retailing are estimated to have "good" to "excellent" prospects.

Since 1993 an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 jobs have been created by electronics and IT, call centres and environmental technology alone.

Mike Hawker, managing director of mail order giant Empire Stores, is positive that Bradford has turned a corner and is heading for better times. Over the past three years Empire, which has operations in Bradford and Wakefield, has recruited up to 1,000 people - primarily for its call centre and warehouse.

"We should be quite positive about Bradford. There's been a lot of investment and there are a lot of successful businesses around," he said.

Increased business activity in Bradford is one reason why the Post Office is reorganising its sorting and delivery operations, investing £5.7m in two new sorting offices due to open next year.

Earlier this month the T&A revealed that nearly £800,000 of public and private sector money was being ploughed into college training courses particularly for the hi-tech electronics sector. The overall objective is to create 7,000 new jobs in the next ten years.

Councillor Dave Green, chairman of Bradford Council's Regeneration Committee, draws hope from the fact that the growth areas detected by the TEC are not all in the service sector (shops, pubs, restaurants, public services).

"We are striving to create a diverse economy. Manufacturing still makes up about 25 per cent of the economy locally, and that's slightly higher than the national average.

"But some things are not up to the Council. Our role is to make land available and the services and infrastructure for new factories and other developments such as the proposed Manchester Road Business Park. There will be hiccups along the way, but the economy in Bradford seems to have adjusted and moved forward in terms of employment and investment.''

He added: "Eight to ten years ago we were fighting to halt Bradford's decline. Now we are looking at how we can develop and grow."

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