ABSTRACT
Any overview of the West Midlands regional economy has to recognise the momentous changes that have taken place in the last 50 years (see bibliography in the appendix for sources on this). It is difficult now to recall the seemingly prosperous, expanding regional economy of the 1950s and 1960s with unemployment regularly below 1%, around half the national average. The acute shortage of labour drew in those seeking work from depressed parts of the UK and the Republic of Ireland and from overseas. Even the then expanding coal mines recruited from such areas. The economic planning that took place, in support of physical planning, was concerned to attract jobs and firms to the new towns and overspill reception areas where the expanding population was to be housed, given the lack of new housing, housing land and shortage of labour in Birmingham and the Black Country.
