Bristol has emerged as one of the UK’s skills hotspots in new research, with more than half its entire workforce classified as highly skilled.
The city ranks 11th in a national table compiled from Office for National Statistics data, with 51.7% of employees in highly skilled roles such as accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses and teachers. 
Bristol trails London, Cambridge, Oxford and Bath – which is in fourth place – but is above most other large cities such as Manchester, Cardiff and Sheffield.
The South West as a whole is outperforming almost other UK regions in attracting and developing highly skilled workers, according to the figures from NatWest’s Regional Economic Tracker.
Since 2008 there has been a 14.5% rise in the number of highly skilled workers in the region – second only to London and equal to the East Midlands out of the 11 British countries/regions in the survey.
The growth has been fuelled by Bristol, Bath and Cheltenham, according to the survey, with all three having a much stronger concentration of highly skilled workers than the UK average.
Bristol’s 51.7% means it has 147,700 people working in categories classified as highly skilled.
The report says there are are also signs of growth in the number medium-skilled jobs in the South West such as care workers, bookkeepers, teaching assistants, electricians, plumbers and builders.
Last year there was a 4.8% growth in this sector in the South West – the second highest of all the regions.
However, the number of low-skilled workers such as retail assistants, cleaners, lorry drivers, waiting staff, taxi drivers and call centre staff in the South West has fallen faster than most other UK regions since 2008.
