Foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment - new jobs and projects

Every year the Department for Business and Trade releases estimates of the number of new foreign direct investment projects and jobs per region, and for the last two years have also released data at the North East LEP level.

In 2021-2022 the North East LEP had an exceptional year in terms of FDI, seeing the largest number of new jobs created outside of London (5,495) and the second largest number of new projects (59). The latest data release covering 2022-2023 shows that while the North East did not match the performance of the previous year there were still 1,631 jobs created through FDI in the area and 53 new projects. These were comparable to the figures for most of the rest of the Core Cities.

The longer regional times series also shows that the North East region consistently performs better than England excluding London in terms of new projects and jobs per head. In 2021-2022 the North East region also outperformed London on a per capita basis, underlining just how exceptional the North East’s performance was that year.
 

Source of investment 

The department for business and trade does not release full breakdowns of the sector and source of FDI projects and jobs at the regional level, but they do release some high-level data. In terms of sector data the proportion of new projects and jobs related to Net Zero and Research and Development is available for 2022-2023. This shows that the North East region receives an above average proportion of investment in the Net Zero sector, which accounted for 21% of all new project and 53% of all new jobs. In contrast it receives a slightly lower proportion of projects and jobs that are research and development focussed than England excluding London.

There is also some limited data on the source of investment at the regional level for three year periods. This data shows that the 58% of new North East projects in the three-year period between 2020-22 were from Non-EU markets. This was about the same proportion as England excluding London (59%) but much lower than the proportion in London (69%).

The breakdown of new jobs was very similar with 58% of new jobs in the North East coming from Non-EU markets. Again this was similar to the proportion in England excluding London (61%) but much lower than in London (75%).