Stoke-on-Trent is still described as a post-industrial pottery city in most national business coverage. That framing is not entirely wrong, but it is badly out of date. In May 2026, the city’s own Economic Development Strategy identifies three officially designated high-growth sectors, and Staffordshire’s quarterly economic bulletins show exactly which industries are hiring right now.
I am not going to dress this up as a clean success story. Stoke-on-Trent carries a claimant count of 6.4%, sitting above both the regional and national averages. The growth signals are real, but so are the challenges. Understanding both is what separates useful local intelligence from promotional copy.
Below I have broken down the sectors where growth is happening, backed by primary source data, so you can make an informed decision about where to position your business or career.
Why the Official Growth Strategy Matters
The council’s Economic Development Strategy 2024-28 sets a nine-priority action plan to move Stoke-on-Trent from a post-industrial base toward a centre for innovation and economic growth. It was formally approved at Cabinet in December 2024 and aligns directly with the UK government’s Industrial Strategy.
What makes the strategy credible rather than aspirational is that it names specific sectors with specific productivity evidence behind them, rather than vague commitments to “economic renewal.” The strategy document itself cites GVA-per-job figures, job creation counts, and infrastructure investment amounts.
The honest context: growth in some sectors sits alongside a skills gap in high-value roles and persistent unemployment in parts of the city. The growth is real. It is also uneven. That matters if you are thinking about where to build, hire, or invest.
The Three Priority Growth Sectors: Advanced Manufacturing, Digital and Crea-Tech, Creative Industries
The strategy designates three sectors as its top priorities. These are not simply the largest employers. They are the sectors the council has identified as having the strongest growth trajectory and the most alignment with national industrial policy.
Advanced Manufacturing
Manufacturing is the sector most people associate with Stoke-on-Trent, and for good reason. The city’s industrial heritage in ceramics and engineering did not disappear; it evolved. Advanced manufacturing today means precision engineering, smart factory processes, and materials science rather than just pottery production lines.
The November 2025 Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Economic Bulletin names mechanical engineers and production engineers among the highest-demand roles in the area. Vacancy demand in engineering has been persistently high across multiple bulletin periods, which signals structural employer demand rather than a short-term spike.
The council is also investing in the supply side. The Advanced Green Skills Centre at Stoke-on-Trent College’s Burslem Campus, which has received MHCLG-approved capital investment, is designed to build a pipeline of construction and engineering talent locally. That kind of infrastructure investment tends to follow genuine employer demand, not precede it.
Digital and Crea-Tech
This is the sector that gets the least coverage in mainstream discussions of Stoke’s economy, and it is arguably the most important one for founders to understand.
According to the 2024-28 strategy document, the digital sector in Stoke-on-Trent is the seventh most productive in the UK, generating £155,000 GVA per job. The UK average is £91,000. That productivity gap is significant: a business operating in this sector produces, on average, 70% more economic value per employee than the national norm.
Between 2015 and 2022, the digital sector in Stoke created 2,000 additional jobs. That is sustained, documented growth over a seven-year period, not a post-pandemic blip.
The crea-tech element covers game development, AI applications, and digital creative production. Staffordshire University has a well-established game development programme which feeds a local graduate pipeline, and the city has purpose-built esports and digital production facilities. For anyone building a tech or digital product business, Stoke offers a talent pool and a cost base that London cannot match.
Creative Industries
Creative industries sit alongside digital in the strategy because Stoke-on-Trent has a genuine competitive advantage here. The ceramics heritage is not just a tourism asset; it represents active manufacturing, design expertise, and brand recognition in premium markets internationally.
The creative sector also ties into the visitor economy, which I cover separately below, since the two are increasingly difficult to disentangle when you are talking about the Potteries as a place people actually come to visit and spend money in.
Sectors Driving Jobs Today: Logistics, Health and Social Care, Construction and Engineering
Beyond the three official priority sectors, the quarterly economic bulletins point clearly to where jobs are actually being created and advertised right now.
Logistics and Advanced Logistics
Stoke-on-Trent’s geographic position is genuinely valuable for distribution businesses. The M6 junction access and the city’s central UK location make it a logical hub for national distribution networks. Several major logistics and fulfilment operations are already established here, and that is not a coincidence.
The November 2025 Economic Bulletin names advanced logistics as one of Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent’s priority growth areas, alongside vacancy data showing sustained demand for LGV drivers and warehouse operatives. The word “advanced” matters here: the growth is in logistics operations that use automation and data systems, not just manual warehousing.
I started my own career as a warehouse operative, and the shift toward automated picking systems and data-driven inventory management I saw accelerating then has only continued. Businesses that can operate at that level are the ones attracting investment now.
Health and Social Care
Health and social care is the largest employer in Stoke-on-Trent by headcount. The November 2025 Economic Bulletin confirms persistent high vacancy demand in this sector, reflecting both an ageing population and a structural undersupply of qualified care workers nationally.
From a business perspective, this sector presents genuine opportunity for providers who can operate efficiently at scale. The demand is not going away. The challenge is that margins are constrained by commissioning structures, so operational efficiency is not optional here; it is the business model.
Construction and Engineering
Construction is listed as a priority growth area in both the April and November 2025 economic bulletins. Several major development projects are active in Stoke right now, including the Goods Yard canalside development, which is projected to deliver 300 permanent jobs and a £63m GVA boost to the city.
That level of development activity creates sustained demand not just for construction workers but for the professional services, suppliers, and subcontractors that wrap around any major build programme.
Green Energy and the Visitor Economy: Two Under-the-Radar Growth Stories
Neither of these sectors gets much attention in competitor coverage of Stoke’s economy. Both are worth knowing about if you are thinking ahead.
Green Energy
The Economic Development Strategy identifies green energy as an emerging priority. Two specific projects illustrate what that means in practice: a planned £30 million energy-from-waste facility upgrade at Hanford, and a £7 million AI data-centre heat-recovery pilot.
These are not theoretical commitments. They are capital investment projects with identified funding, and they signal that the city is positioning itself in the green infrastructure space that the national Industrial Strategy is designed to support.
For businesses in construction, engineering, data infrastructure, or energy consultancy, this is a sector worth watching closely. The procurement and supply chain opportunities that come with projects at this scale tend to be substantial.
The Visitor Economy
This one surprises people. The visitor economy across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent is worth approximately £2.7 billion a year and supports around 25,000 jobs regionally. That makes it one of the largest employment sectors in the area by headcount.
Stoke’s ceramics heritage, the Potteries museums, and the surrounding countryside represent a genuine draw that has been historically undersold. A new Destination Management Plan is in development under the Local Visitor Economy Partnership, which suggests that the coordinated promotion of the area’s tourism offer is about to improve significantly.
For anyone building a hospitality, food and drink, retail, or experience business, the direction of travel in the visitor economy is positive. It rewards businesses that understand local identity and can build on it, rather than compete with generic national chains on price alone.
Support Available to Businesses in Stoke-on-Trent’s Growth Sectors
Understanding which sectors are growing is only half the picture. The other half is knowing what support exists if you are operating in one of them.
The Stoke-on-Trent Invest and Grow Funding programme, part-funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, offered grants of £10,000 to £50,000 specifically for businesses in Advanced Manufacturing, Digital, Life Sciences, and Energy investing in the city. The programme was listed as running to March 2026. As of publication in May 2026, contact the Growth Hub directly to confirm whether it has been extended or replaced, because these programmes do evolve.
The Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire LEP closed on 31 March 2024. Its functions have been absorbed by Staffordshire County Council and Stoke-on-Trent City Council, with the Staffordshire Growth Hub continuing as the primary front-line business support service. If you need advice on what support is currently available, the Growth Hub is the right first call.
The Low Carbon Business Evolution Programme, delivered via the Staffordshire Business and Enterprise Network, offers energy-efficiency support including sub-metering grants up to £5,000 and solar capital grants. That is relevant to any business looking to reduce operating costs while aligning with the green growth agenda.
Using This Data Without Getting Distracted by It
Knowing which sectors are officially designated as growth areas is useful context. It is not a business plan on its own.
The risk I see with sector-level intelligence like this is that founders treat it as a signal to pivot, rather than as context for sharper decisions within their existing direction. Before you change anything, ask two questions: does my business model actually benefit from being in one of these sectors, either through access to local talent, grant eligibility, or supply chain proximity? And if so, am I structured internally to capture that benefit, or am I just operating in a growth sector without the systems to grow with it?
The mistake I see Staffordshire founders make most often is identifying the external opportunity clearly and then underestimating the internal work required to act on it. Sector tailwinds do not substitute for cashflow discipline, clear KPIs, and a operations structure that can handle growth. They just make the opportunity cost of getting those things wrong a bit higher.
Once you have a clear picture of which sector you are in and what support you are entitled to, the harder work is internal: financial planning, operational structure, cashflow management, and how you actually deploy any capital you access. That is where most Staffordshire businesses get stuck, not in identifying the opportunity, but in executing against it.
If you are a Staffordshire business that has identified your sector, secured or is working toward funding, and needs help thinking through the internal side (the financial planning, the KPI structure, the operational design), I offer a free discovery call through Wright Advisory. No pressure, no sales script. Just a conversation about what you are building and whether I can help you build it better. Book a free discovery call here.
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