Reading Is One of the UK's Fastest-Growing Job Markets - And It Now Has a 10-Year Plan to Match

25 Aug 2026 By Sarah McKechnie

Two things have happened in Reading in fairly quick succession. The town has been named one of the UK's fastest-growing places for jobs and talent, and Reading Borough Council and REDA have published a ten-year framework setting out how they intend to sustain that.

Taken separately, each is a decent headline. Taken together, they tell you something more useful: where the local labour market is heading, and what it will mean for anyone trying to hire here over the next few years.

First, the ranking

Reading has been named among the UK's top 10 places "on the rise" in LinkedIn's first UK ranking of the country's fastest-growing job markets - a list built on where hiring is accelerating, where employers are posting more roles, and where more professionals are moving in than moving out.

Reading sits alongside Belfast, Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow, Sheffield, Southampton, Tyneside and Cheshire West and Chester. It is also the only entry that isn't technically a city, a detail local businesses have been enjoying.

Three things stood out in the analysis:

The growth forecast. Reading's economy is expected to be the UK's fastest-growing local economy between 2025 and 2028, based on EY forecasts. That is not a marginal advantage over the rest of the country; it is the top of the table.

The technology base. Microsoft, Oracle and Virgin Media O2 all have a significant presence here, and the wider Thames Valley cluster continues to pull in scale-ups alongside the established names. A dense technology sector doesn't just create technology jobs; it creates finance, HR, operations and commercial roles inside those businesses, and it supports the professional services firms that serve them.

The infrastructure. Proximity to London and the Elizabeth Line remains a structural advantage, and the £750m Station Hill regeneration is reshaping the town centre and the Grade A office stock that anchors relocations.

None of which will surprise anyone who works here. The more interesting question is what happens next, and that's where the second piece of news comes in.

Second, the plan

Reading Borough Council and REDA (Reading's Economy and Destination Agency) have set out an Economic Development Framework covering 2025 to 2035, with specific actions mapped over the first five years. It was co-created by the council and REDA with support from consultants EMGT, endorsed by the council's Policy Committee, and will be followed by an implementation plan with progress reported annually.

Strategy documents don't usually make for gripping reading. This one is worth twenty minutes, because it tells you where investment, planning support and skills funding are likely to point over the next decade and that shapes which functions grow, where, and how hard they'll be to staff.

It replaces the Powered by People strategy developed during the pandemic, and it was built on a fairly substantial evidence base, including primary research such as a mapping of Grade A office development across Reading's business parks and the town centre. That detail matters more than it sounds: Grade A office supply is one of the better leading indicators of inward investment, because it determines whether a business relocating into the region can actually land here.

The Framework also sits inside a wider structure. It aligns with the Berkshire Economic Strategy, owned by the Berkshire Prosperity Board, and with the refresh of the Reading 2050 Vision, and it has been written with devolution in mind.

The four themes

The Framework carries forward three existing aims and adds a fourth:

Inclusive Reading: Growth that reaches the wards currently left out of it.
Smart and Sustainable Reading: the low-carbon, innovation-led ambition running through the Reading 2050 vision.
Destination Reading: The visitor economy, culture and town centre offer.
Reading City Region: New and arguably the most significant. It positions Reading at the centre of a wider economic geography rather than as a single borough: in the short term, collaboration with neighbouring Berkshire authorities; in the longer term, with authorities beyond Berkshire.

That fourth theme is the one to watch. If Reading is being planned as the hub of a city region rather than a Berkshire town, the practical travel-to-work area, the pool you're actually recruiting from, gets treated as a single market. For employers, that's an argument for thinking about catchment and commute in wider terms than a postcode radius.

The sectors being backed

The Framework identifies a set of opportunity areas: advanced technologies, defence, film and TV production, professional services and climate change expertise, alongside the transformational investments already underway in and around the town centre.

For anyone planning headcount, that list is a useful forward indicator.

Advanced technology and professional services are already the engine of finance, commercial and office-based recruitment locally, and both are hungry for the same functions, meaning you are frequently competing for candidates with businesses in a completely different sector.

Defence is a growth area nationally, and brings with it security-cleared roles, longer lead times and a genuinely constrained candidate pool.

Film and TV production is newer and more cyclical, but carries a specific set of production accounting, payroll and operational needs, often project-based, which usually means contract and interim rather than permanent.

Climate and sustainability expertise is the one most employers are underestimating. Sustainability reporting responsibilities increasingly land inside finance teams, and the supply of people who understand both the accounting and the reporting frameworks is thin.

The tension worth being honest about

Reading's problem is not growth. Its workforce ranks 4th in the UK for productivity and 6th for qualification levels, and development is following the economics: the number of households in central Reading is forecast to rise by 161% by 2041, an increase of nearly 9,000.

The problem is that this strong headline performance sits alongside persistent local inequality, with several areas of the borough among the most deprived 10% nationally, and wards with high child poverty and low attainment and employment rankings. The Framework is explicit about wanting to close that gap rather than simply accelerate the top line.

That matters to employers for a practical, unsentimental reason. If the local talent pool is going to keep pace with local demand, more of it has to be built rather than bought.

What this means if you're hiring

A fast-growing job market is a double-edged thing. It means opportunity, investment, and a deeper local talent pool. It also means your next hire has more options than they did two years ago, and that competitors you've never had to think about are now recruiting from the same shortlist.

In practice:

Counter-offers are back. When local demand is strong, resignations get met with a number. Build that into your process rather than being surprised by it.
Speed is a differentiator. A four-week process with five stages loses candidates who have two other offers moving faster.
Your employer brand is working whether you manage it or not. Candidates researching a Reading employer are comparing it against Microsoft, Oracle and a dozen well-funded scale-ups.
Plan headcount against a longer horizon. If a growth plan runs to 2028, the finance and operational hires that support it need scoping now, not when the pressure arrives.
Invest in the pipeline you'll need in three years. Apprenticeships, study support and part-qualified development matter in a market where the junior intake across the professions has narrowed. Businesses competing purely on salary for finished candidates will find that a more expensive game every year.
Widen the catchment deliberately. If the region is being planned as a city region, recruit like it, including on hybrid policy, which effectively sets the radius of your talent pool.

And if you're a candidate

If you've been sitting tight, this is a good moment to test the market. Salaries in the region continue to move, and businesses that are growing are usually the ones building the roles with the most scope. That said, a strong market rewards preparation, not opportunism; the candidates who do well are the ones who can articulate what they want from a move beyond the number.

What happens next

The council and REDA have been asked to produce an implementation plan based on the actions in the Framework, with progress reported back annually. That reporting is the thing to keep an eye on; strategies are judged on delivery, and the annual updates will tell you whether the skills and infrastructure commitments are moving at the pace the growth forecasts assume.

We've been recruiting across the Thames Valley for 25 years, and our Thames Valley team places finance and business support professionals across Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Whether you're building a team against a growth plan or exploring your next move, get in touch for a conversation about what the market is really doing.

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