City’s increasing to keep on rising
SWANSEA has become home for an extra 13,000 people over the last decade - a trend that is expected to increase.
Migration is the main driver in the population rise, according to a Swansea Council report, with a decline in mortality rate as we live longer another factor.
It means Swansea welcomes an average of three or four new faces every day, and the county’s population is estimated to be around 245,500 as of last year.
Some new arrivals are from England, while others, like Akam Zadeh, come from further afield.
Mr Zadeh, from Kurdistan, settled in Swansea six-and-a-half years ago after a stint in Glasgow, and has nothing but praise for Wales’s second city.
Asked what he liked about it, he replied: “Everything, from the seaside, the housing, the people and the way the streets are.”
When he first arrived he studied A levels at Gower College Swansea’s Tycoch campus, and then began a business course at Swansea University before setting up a barber’s, Figaro’s, on High Street in 2014.
He said the number of migrant business owners in High Street had multiplied since then.
“I think the population has increased a lot,” he said. The council report also said life expectancy for men and women in Swansea was 77.8 and 82.2 respectively, although there is a big variation between the most deprived and least deprived areas.
Just under 9% of Swansea’s population is aged 75 and over - another trend which is on the up.
And with two universities there is a higher proportion of young adults, in term time at least, compared to the Welsh average.
The Welsh Government reckons Swansea’s current population growth rate of 5.6% will increase to 9% over the next two decades, and only be eclipsed by that of Cardiff and Wrexham.
When it comes to work, 84% of Swansea’s employees work in the service sector - retail, call centres, entertainment and tourism and the like - while 28% are in the public sector and 6.5% are in manufacturing.
The council needs to plan for the rising population and is doing so