Dundee is becoming a less affordable place to live and work despite experiencing strong jobs growth, a new report has found.
The Demos-PwC Good Growth for Cities Index 2018 found Dundee had joined every other Scottish city in enjoying above average jobs growth relative to the rest of the UK.
The City of Discovery also outperformed the wider pack in relation to work-life balance, skills and environment but reported a worrying trend in health, owner occupation and house price to earnings.
The index found Perth finished above the UK average in skills and income distribution but fell behind in health.
David Brown, head of government and public sector for PwC in Scotland, said there had been “a clear improvement” for Scotland’s cities overall, adding that there had been a “strong performance” in Dundee and Perth.
“As Scotland becomes an increasingly popular destination for foreign direct investment, it is clear that all our cities have something to offer, which can only be good for future economic growth and living standards,” he said.
“There remain challenges in our cities, however. There is a widening gap between earnings and house prices, which keeps owner occupier rates down.
“And Scotland continues to score either at or below average when it comes to health. These indicators are a reminder that to enjoy ‘good growth’ we need to focus on alleviating long-terms sickness as well as job creation and new business formation.”
The full index includes 42 UK cities with a travel-to-work area of at least 250,000 people, however a number of smaller cities were also analysed, resulting in a separate list of 11 which includes Dundee and and Perth.
While Tayside’s cities were not included in the wider index, the data collected reveals how the region’s largest urban areas performed against the key long-term drivers of growth since the 2008 financial crisis.
Perth finished fourth in a list of the best devolved cities in the UK to live and work, while Dundee took up fifth place on the list, ahead of Glasgow, Belfast, Cardiff and Swansea.
The 42-city index found that Edinburgh and Aberdeen were among the top ten cities in the UK to live and work, with Glasgow moving up two places to 25.
With a decade of data to draw upon, the report found that across the four nations, England and Scotland had consistently outperformed Wales and Northern Ireland since 2013-15. However, the general trend has been for all nations to improve.
The report noted health has continued to be one of the poorest performing variables for Scotland, with all Scottish cities scoring either at or below average.
