An independent Wolverhampton Skills and Employment Commission has been established to provide Wolverhampton City Council and its local partners with a set of practical recommendations on how to ensure that Wolverhampton has the appropriately skilled workforce required to support the City’s economic growth, to support the sustainability of businesses in the city and critically to ensure that residents and young people have access to the right skills provision to give them the best chance of securing employment. Anne Green, who was formerly Chair of the West Midlands Regional Observatory's Economy and Labour Force Topic Group and who has undertaken a series of research projects on local skills issues, has been invited to serve on the Commission and attended its first meeting at Molineux Stadium, the home of Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, on 6 January 2015. For more details see the Commission's website.

Professor Anne Green was interviewed for BBC Midlands today. Anne comments on the the falling levels of unemployment in the West Midlands and what it means for young people who are still at a higher risk of being unemployed.

If so, we would love to talk to you.

The Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick is doing some research for the Home Office on why and how different groups of people work in hotels, restaurants and fast food outlets or in the construction industry in the Greater West Midlands area. The experiences of those working in these two sectors of the economy will be compared and contrasted.