About Belfast

"Just go there. You will find that people work well. They are motivated. They are best workforce in Europe bar none."  - Ian Craig, Executive Vic President and President, Nortel.

People

• There are currently 267,374 people living in the city while over 645,536 people live in the wider metropolitan area.
• The city has one of the youngest populations in Europe - a fifth of the population is less than 16 years old.
• The working age population accounts for over 60% of the city’s total population.
• Belfast’s population growth has stabilised in recent years and is expected to grow by 0.25% by 2016.

Location

• Belfast is the heart of Northern Ireland, located on the northeast coast of Ireland and is part of the United Kingdom.
• Our closest major cities by car include Dublin (103.9 miles/ 167.2 km), Londonderry (71.4 miles/114.9 km).
• Belfast has two modern airports within 20 minutes of the city centre with regular flights throughout the day to London (75 minutes), Manchester (60 minutes), Edinburgh (50 minutes), Paris (100 minutes), Berlin (225 minutes), New York (440 minutes) and many other locations throughout North America and Europe.

Figure 1: Number of Minutes to Major UK Cities and Beyond Source: www.belfastairport.com, Belfast International Airport

• Belfast has excellent road, rail, sea links to Ireland, the UK, Europe and beyond.
• The Port of Belfast offers shipping services, providing over 80 freight and passenger sailings per week to Great Britain and 10 direct container sailings per week to mainland Europe.

Economy

• GVA per capita for Belfast is £26,792. The trend in productivity for Belfast is promising; between 2000 and 2005 GVA per capita in Belfast increased by 35.3%.
• Belfast is the capital city of the second fastest growing regional economy in the UK.
• There are 192,293 employee jobs in the city, 30% of the total employment in Northern Ireland.
• Employment sectors within Belfast are changing. Financial and business services are projected to drive Belfast’s employment growth accounting for three-quarters of overall net new jobs between now and 2015.
• The number of VAT registered businesses* has increased by 45% from 6,265 registered businesses in 2006 to 9,125 registered businesses in 2007. Our main business sectors include Property and Business Services (30.6%) and Retail (19.1%).