article: The Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute says boosting the number of skilled jobs would stop the north falling further behind the south. Author Tom Hunt said manufacturing was a "good base to build on". The government said the research, commissioned by BBC Sheffield, backed the case for its Northern Powerhouse. The findings come from a review of the economies of Sheffield, Brighton and surrounding areas, and Oxfordshire. Published in the week Chancellor George Osborne will deliver his Autumn statement, and just over a month after political leaders in the Sheffield City Region put pen to paper on a devolution deal, the report for BBC Radio Sheffield lays bare the challenge facing the chancellor in kick-starting the Northern Powerhouse. The report compared areas such as employment, wages and economic output in the Sheffield City Region, Oxfordshire and the Coast to Capital (stretching from Brighton to south London) Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP). It concluded Sheffield's weaker performance since the 2008 financial crisis is an "indication that the decades-long trend of the South of England significantly to outperform the North persists". The report added: "In the context of austerity politics and the prospect of further reductions in government spending, the economy of the South of England looks set to continue significantly to outperform the North of England." Mr Hunt said the research had used economic indicators including employment and unemployment rates, weekly pay and economic output to see how the three economies performed since the global financial crisis hit in 2008. He said: "What we saw over the last 10 years is that the Sheffield City Region economy had consistently higher unemployment than the two areas in the south. "We also saw that pay on average was lower in Sheffield City Region than in the two southern regions and we saw that the economic output for the Sheffield City Region was lower throughout the whole of the last decade." He said: "One of the more surprising elements was when you look at the economic output [gross value added (GVA)] of Sheffield City Region. "This is an economy which contributes £30bn to the overall UK economy a year, but when you break that down into economic output per person Sheffield City Region comes out 38th out of 39 regions in England. "The figure per person is around £17,000 a head - only Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly have a lower figure." He said he one of the main reasons for the low GVA was the number of people in Sheffield employed in low wage and low skilled employment, such as retail, hotels and the restaurant sector. "Those areas in the south have seen the percentage of people working in that sector decline in the last ten years, but in Sheffield City Region they have stayed flat," he said. "Since 2012 when the economic recovery began to take place most new jobs in Sheffield City Region have been in that retail, hotels and restaurant sector, so what we need in Sheffield City Region are jobs in the higher value sectors such as finance, such as professional
summary: An increase in manufacturing jobs in the Sheffield City Region could help close the economic gap between northern and southern regions, a report says.