London's share of high-paying jobs reached 40.8%, limiting other UK regions' access to leaders who could improve business productivity, consultancy McKinsey & Company said in research published Oct. 21.
That compares with a national share of 23.2%, the authors found. Their analysis, “The UK’s regional talent trap and how it restricts regional growth: UK Productivity Series, part 2,” links the concentration to regional recruitment difficulties.
The authors argued that London's career opportunities draw high-performing graduates, leaving businesses elsewhere struggling to recruit enough leaders to improve how they operate. They identified manufacturing, food production and logistics among the businesses most exposed.
McKinsey drew on management surveys, international productivity comparisons and earlier company research covering 2011 to 2019. The authors linked London's attraction for talent to weaker adoption of management systems, the routines businesses use to assign resources and track performance.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's 2025 data put UK output at $86 an hour worked, compared with $103 in Germany and $105 in the United States. Those figures adjust for differences in purchasing power.
The authors said September revisions by the Office for National Statistics narrowed Britain's productivity shortfall without closing it. They said their comparisons between UK regions did not depend on the method used to count working hours.
McKinsey found that high-paying jobs were growing more than two and a half times faster in London than elsewhere in the country. The authors argued that couples with two high-earning careers face particular obstacles to leaving.
They said London often offers both partners suitable work in the same place. Professional identity can discourage one partner from relocating even when a move would improve the household's finances.
The authors linked regional recruitment difficulties to declining rewards for operational leadership. McKinsey put the median production manager at the 67th percentile of UK earners today, down from the 86th percentile in 1970.
Earlier McKinsey Global Institute research covered about 8,300 large companies across four sectors in Britain, Germany and the United States. It found fewer than 100 companies generated two-thirds of the sample's productivity growth between 2011 and 2019.
The authors acknowledged that the earlier study did not examine geography within countries. They made the connection to London in the new analysis.
They argued that improving regional access to leadership talent could help businesses adopt better management practices and retain more wealth locally. Their proposed direction was to strengthen other regions while preserving London's growth and its contribution to public finances.
