But a 3,000 rise in the workforce across Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley and Sandwell disguises that the success of creating 9,000 new jobs in the private sector was partly wiped out by the loss of 6,000 public sector jobs as Government spending cuts bit deep across local authorities and a string of other state-funded organisations.

At the same time, people in the Black Country are much less physically active than the UK average and the area.

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And figures for infant death, diabetes and childhood obesity are significantly worse than for the UK as a whole.

The facts and figures are all revealed in a newly published Economic Review, a look at the Black Country and the state we are in.

It has been compiled by the economic intelligence unit of the Black Country Consortium, the organisation set up between local business leaders and local authorities more than a decade ago to co-ordinate their efforts to regenerate the area.

To keep track of progress – or the lack of it – the consortium compiles huge amounts of data every year.

One of the key numbers it produces is something called the 'output gap'. It effectively compares how well the Black Country is performing as a local economy, and how well it should be performing compared to the rest of the UK.

The bad news is that an overall assessment shows the Black Country's economy is around £7.8 billion short of where it needs to be. The worse news is that figure has been getting bigger, not smaller.

Since 2004 it has gone up by around £3 billion, and last year it rose another £200 million.

This is partly because we have too few people in jobs, and partly because our people don't have good enough skills. But the biggest problem is that the Black Country economy lacks dynamism – it underperforms in terms of competition, investment, innovation and enterprise. We simply don't create enough businesses.

In the UK as a whole, for every 10,000 people around 42 businesses are created every year.

In the Black Country that falls to just 30.

Across the area that means 1,453 businesses that should be started, aren't.

And the area loses out in terms of wages, spending, taxes and all the other benefits healthy businesses bring to an area to the tune of £5.4bn.

But the businesses we do have are often doing very well indeed.

Around 90,000 people in the Black Country have jobs in what is now called the High Value Manufacturing sector. That is firms making parts for cars, planes, oil rigs, pipelines and anything else that requires engineering know-how and precision. While we still have some of the old metal bashing businesses their work is more about skill than brute strength and ignorance.

The result is that the Black Country has become the heart of the UK's engineering components industry. Parts made in Dudley, West Bromwich, Oldbury, Walsall or Wolverhampton are now going into virtually every car and aircraft now being produced in the UK.

Companies like Jaguar Land Rover, with its new engine plant on the i54, and Tata Steel, with its major investment at the Wednesfield Steelpark, see the Black Country as an area with a manufacturing future.

But that has brought its own set of problems – the biggest of which is the region's skills gap, says Stewart Towe, chairman of the Local Enterprise Partnership – a joint group of business leaders and local council chiefs given the job of boosting employment and the local economy.

Mr Towe said the skills issue was 'absolutely critical' and is appealing to more young people – and their parents – to consider careers in engineering and manufacturing.

At the same time he said schools and colleges needed to put more emphasis on 'life skills', to improve the employability of young people.

Mr Towe, who is also head of Smethwick manufacturing group Hadley, said: "I looked at the technical skills in my own workplace and we have a lot of really good people over 45 or 50.

"Then we have a big gap and more good people who are aged 20 to 35.

"Where are the people aged 35 to 50? That was the time when things were not going well in the manufacturing sector and their parents said: 'Don't get a job there'.

"What we need now is for more young people to come through to fill that gap."

The problem is that the number of people in the Black Country classed as unskilled actually went up last year, to 111,500 or 16.4 per cent of the population. At the other end of the scale, we only have 151,600 residents with degrees, or 22.4 per cent, compared to a national average of 34.2 per cent. Our youngsters are now producing better results at school, with pupils achieving five or more GCSEs, including English and maths, at grades A*-C now up to 58.2 per cent.

That's compared to 56.7 per cent in 2012 and just 37 per cent in 2006.

But, in the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, just 54 school pupils were entered in engineering exams across the Black Country in 2013.

The key is skills for work. Last year 12,390 young people started on apprenticeships in the Black Country, but the majority were in business services sector, for business and administration, management and customer services.

The biggest single area was in health and social care, where 2,003 apprenticeships were started. And most of the youngsters are being recruited by major retail chains and the public sector – hospital trusts and local authorities.

Sarah Middleton, chief executive of the Black Country Consortium, says the lastest economic review of the area found 24 per cent of apprentices were being recruited by just 18 companies.

Less than one in 10 of the Black Country's 30,000 businesses has hired an apprentice.

Stewart Towe added: "One of our biggest problems is that we have too many lifestyle businesses."

They are run by people who want to maintain a certain lifestyle and they have no interest in training for the future.

To tackle that the Black Country is committed, under its new City Deal funding agreement with the Government, to delivering another 1,500 apprenticeships for the high value manufacturing sector. And, to help improve skills and increase apprenticeships among the smaller companies, last year the Black Country Skills Factory was set up.

In just six months it has worked with 23 Black Country companies to provide bite-sized training to address the skills shortages in the sector and improve the skills of the existing workforce.

But that lack of skills is a big factor in another area where the Black Country is still losing out: wages.

The average earnings for a Black Country person in full time work last year was £23,256. That is up £216 on the previous year but still £3,761 short of the national average wage of £27,017.

Unemployment remains high, at 11.2 per cent compared to eight per cent nationally. To get us up to the national average would mean more than 16,000 people finding a job. As a result, 111,580 people in the Black Country are currently classed as 'workless' – claiming one of the main out-of-work benefits such as Jobseeker's Allowance or incapacity benefit.

While skills and education are a big part of the job in hand, work is also under way to create more quality space for companies to move in and create jobs, such as the Black Country Enterprise Zone areas in Wolverhampton and Darlaston.

And, after the nationwide housing slump caused by the credit crunch, the construction industry is building again with nearly 2,300 additional homes completed last year.

As well as affordable homes, there have been developments such as the Compton Park site in Wolverhampton, where Redrow has created a small estate of four and five bedroom homes.

At the same time work is going on across the district, improving retail and leisure facilities to make the Black Country a nicer place to visit – because the so-called 'visitor economy' is another potentially major source of income.

Transport is another big issue, and the last year has seen work under way on the £36 million M54 junction 2 scheme, improving access to the i54 business site, as well as the £25m A41 West Bromwich Underpass.

The Economic Review shows that the Black Country is making progress in areas such as education and training, building new homes and increasing jobs.

But it also underlines that this area has a long way to go.

Improvements are making Black Country a better place to live

Key to hopes of regenerating the Black Country are the efforts to improve the quality of the place itself.

That ranges from building more homes and places for people to work to improving the road and rail links.

And, like so much in the latest Economic Review of how the Black Country is performing, it is a mixed tale.

The quality of the air we breathe is better, with carbon emissions down by 0.5 tonnes per person in the last year.

The number of new homes was increased by 2,296 and what planners called 'high quality employment land' – the sort of place that will attract companies paying higher wages – increased by 39.4 hectres to 634 hectares – or 1,567 acres.

But the amount of office floorspace in centres seen as key for that sort of growth only increased by 150 square metres, while the amount of shopping space fell by 76sq metres.

And no more land has been put aside for local nature reserves despite a target of having one hectare of nature reserves per 1,000 people.

We currently have 902 hectares and our population means we should have 1,140.

This goes up if, as is hoped, the population of the Black Country grows.

After years of decline, we are now seeing more people move in than move out, with our population up by 7,000 last year.

The aim of the grand plan, drawn up by local councils and the Black Country Consortium more than a decade ago, is to bring in another 53,000 people by 2033 as part of the resurgence of the area.

To that end we need to have created 113,000 new jobs, cut the number of workless by a third, build 63,000 new homes by 2016 and make NEETs – young people not in education, employment or training – a redundant term.

Unfortunately, with youth unemployment almost twice the national rate – 10,390 young people aged 16 to 24 currently claim Jobseeker's Allowance – those targets are still a long way off.

In terms of job creation, the Black Country is poorly off for premises. A strategic economic plan is currently being drawn up.

It will be key in aiding the Black Country's hopes of get our hands on 177 million euros – around £150 million – in vital European Union Structural Investment Funds.

Along with the recently signed City Deal agreement with the Government the aim is to creating more training places, bring brownfield wasteland back into use, attract more business investment and, hopefully, create more jobs and wealth for the Black Country.

The Local Enterprise Partnership – the body made up of council bosses and business leaders with the job of encouraging more jobs and growth in the area – is predicting the City Deal alone could help create 5,800 jobs over its first four years.

One project involves working with 2,800 long term unemployed social housing tenants.

This is to move at least 900 people in to jobs, boosting the local wage bill by £19m and cutting benefit costs by £1.1m.

It’s an uphill battle to boost health

Blame too much fast food or too little education about diet and exercise.

Whatever the cause, the Black Country has a poor record when it comes to health.

Sarah Middleton, chief executive of the Black Country Consortium, said: "Enthusiasm about the Olympics has worn off, and there has been a drop in activity in sport."

In terms of bald statistics, as a nation around 35.7 per cent of us engage in some form of sporting activity at least once a week. In the Black Country that falls to 28.6 per cent.

To close that gap it would need nearly 65,000 people to get off their sofas and be more active.

Unfortunately, the costs of these low rates of activity are felt in rising medical costs on illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease.

Research carried out in 2013 by Oxford University shows the total cost of inactivity to the Black Country economy is over £23 million.

It also means that the Black Country performs significantly worse than average for many of the major health indicators.

While figures for infant deaths, children in poverty, smoking during pregnancy and teenage pregnancy have all improved over the last year, many have got worse.

In particular, the number of stays in hospital due to alcohol for those aged under 18 increased by 7.5 points to 70.6 per 100,000 in the population.

The Black Country BeActive Partnership is working with a number of organisations to try and improve health and well-being by encouraging sport and physical activity, but it is clearly an uphill struggle.

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