West Midlands was the worst hit region of the UK economy at the start of the pandemic
The region's local economy shrunk by 21% between April and June.
Last updated 3rd Feb 2021
New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the West Midlands was the worst hit local economy at the start of the pandemic.
Of the nine English regions, the largest negative growth in Quarter 2 2020 was the West Midlands with negative 21.0%, whilst the smallest decline came from London, at negative 16.6%.
The ONS data revealed that it was the second quarter in a row the West Midlands had seen the biggest fall in GDP, after a 4.7% decline in the first three months of the year.
Business leaders say this is down to manufacturing plants across the region being forced to close.
There is growing hope of a strong recovery though - thanks to a high number of new online businesses setup during lockdown in Birmingham last year.
Despite the events of the year, nearly half a million businesses were registered in the UK in 2020 (468,371), according to data taken from Companies House and collated by UK printing company Instantprint.
Birmingham and Coventry both made it into the top 20 UK cities for new business registrations, with Birmingham seeing 11,185 and Coventry 2,677.
Owing to the unpredictable impact of Covid-19, a reported 9.9million UK jobs were furloughed between April and December last year, resulting in many UK adults pivoting their careers, starting completely afresh and picking up a side hustles as a way of making money during the turbulent year.
The most popular start-up in 2020 was in the retail sales sector (both online and via mail order houses) with 22,011 new registrations in this field. Other popular choices included management consultancy (16,869), the buying and selling of own real estate (16,747) and freight transport via road (10,848).
Manu Taylor-Sidhu, originally from New York but now living in Birmingham, co-founded the fashion start-up, Rent Rock Repeat with her business partner Philip Wattis in October, 2020.
She said: "Millennials will hands down be spearheading this move to online businesses, We've struggled to get the older generations to understand flexible working situations and the pandemic has sort of made that a reality overnight."
Hear all the latest news from across the West Midlands on the hour, every hour, on 103.1 and 97.2FM (Wolverhampton, Black Country and Shropshire), 96.4FM (Birmingham), 97 and 102.9FM (Coventry and Warwickshire), 97.6FM, 102.8FM and 96.7FM (Herefordshire and Worcestershire), DAB, at freeradio.co.uk, and on the Free Radio app.