The West Midlands has lost 83,000 public sector jobs over the past five years, a new analysis has found.
The scale of the huge losses now revealed shows how the number of people employed by the state in the region has fallen by 16 per cent.
But the data also reveals that the loss has been more than offset by an increase in private sector employment – which is up by 131,000 over five years.
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An analysis of official employment data produced by the Office for National Statistics shows that the number of public sector jobs in the West Midlands fell to 448,000 in the five years from mid-2010 to mid-2015, a net fall of 83,000.
An extra 131,000 private sector jobs were created in the region in the same period, bringing the total to 2,108,000.
Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell (Con, Sutton Coldfield) said: “It is very good news that more people are finding work in the West Midlands, that employers are thriving and the private sector is growing, with new job opportunities outstripping the inevitable loss of public sector jobs.
“Entrepreneurialism is alive and well in the West Midlands after some difficult years.”
Local authorities and police have been forced to lose staff as a result of cuts in central government funding.
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Funding for West Midlands Police has fallen by 23 per cent and 1,493 police officer roles have been lost.
A report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee said the force had been unfairly affected by a quirk in the funding scheme known as dampening, which meant it had received £43 million less than it would otherwise have received.
The Committee said in a report: “Since 2010 actual funding for Commissioners has been subject to a process known as ‘damping’, which smooths the large variations in funding allocations that arise from applying the funding formula, so that all Commissioners had an equal funding reduction.
“For example, West Midlands Police had its initial funding allocations reduced by £132 million between 2010-11 and 2013-14 as a result of damping, while Northumbria Police received an extra £99 million in the same period.”
Birmingham City Council is set to make cuts of £250 million worth of cuts over two years.
The latest unemployment figures show the number out of work in the West Midlands is 156,000 - a fall of 21,000 over the past three months, and 44,000 less than a year ago.
However, some economic data suggests the economic recovery may be stalling.
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It showed the balance of firms where manufacturing production rose compared to those where output fell was unchanged in the quarter to September – the first time output failed to expand over the three months to September since January 2013.
The report added that export orders this month among small and medium-sized firms were at their lowest level since October 2009.