Shoots of recovery are now blossoming into growth as York emerges from the downturn positioned to expand its horizons, reach out into new markets, and develop its core appeal.

The city was not immune to the financial crash, sectors were hit and jobs were lost, but now, more than a year after the UK emerged from a double dip recession, a corner has been turned and a rise in confidence is translating into increased business activity in York.

A record number of businesses were started in York in the third quarter of 2013. The city broke its own record for the number of new companies set up in the third quarter of last year, with 388 new companies formed in the area.

The figure was more than any other third quarter on record for the area and a ten per cent rise on the same period in 2012.

Company formation numbers have been rising every third quarter since 2009, suggesting that business confidence remained comparatively high during and after the recession.

The start-up figures for York were produced in the Duport Business Confidence Report, which analyses public record data from sources including Companies House, the Office for National Statistics and the Ordnance Survey.

The report also showed that York’s net company growth, which is the number of company formations, minus the number of company closures, also rose during the third quarter of 2013.

Think-tank Centre for Cities ranked York at 13th in the country for employment with 103,300 jobs putting 73.6 per cent of the city’s population into work.

The city has also reached fifth place in the list of cities with the lowest job seekers allowance claimant count, dropping to 1.6 per cent in 2013 from 2.2 per cent the previous year.

Proving itself as an educated city, York is the seventh highest city in the country for the people of working age with qualifications at NVQ level 4 or above, with 41.3 per cent of the population having earned high level qualifications.

The figure compares to a national average of 34.2 per cent.

York is also seventh of the list of cities with the lowest percentage of its working age population having no formal qualifications, with the figure standing at 6.5 per cent, just over two thirds of the 9.9 per cent national figure.

The Centre for Cities report states: “Skill levels are a key component of the success of a city economy. Those cities that have a high proportion of graduates tend to have stronger economies than those that have a large number of people with no formal qualifications.”

York is placed fourth in the country for well-being with a life satisfaction score of 7.64 for 2012/13, compared to Ipswich which came first with 7.74.

The city was also sixth in the list of cities with the lowest levels of inequality.

In an overview of York, the Centre for Cities report showed average weekly wages in the city are £480, dropping 3.7 per cent, the equivalent of £17 less since 2012.

The industrial structure of the city sees 31.2 per cent of the workforce employed in public service jobs in 2012, with 17.1 per cent in knowledge intensive service jobs, and 43.2 per cent in other services.

Just four per cent of York’s workforce is employed in manufacturing jobs, the sixth lowest percentage in the country.

On the retail scene the small number of empty shops in the centre of York put the city second in a poll of the lowest shop vacancy rates in the country. The city came second only to Cambridge in the list of “large centres” with the lowest percentage of empty shops.

York, which has a vacancy rate of seven per cent according to The Local Data Company, beat the overall outlook for Yorkshire and the Humber, which has been listed as the fourth worst hit area, with almost 17 per cent of shops standing empty.

York currently contributes £4.3 billion to the country’s economy, and with ambitions to become a top ten European city economy by 2015, the plan for further growth is equally ambitious.

Recent economic forecasting undertaken by Oxford Economics projects the city’s Gross Value Added (GVA) is set to grow by 63 per cent by 2030, adding £2.5 billion and a 13 per cent growth in jobs.

The private sector to public sector employment ratio now stands at 2.2. The Centre for Cities report highlights a -4.9 per cent drop in the number of private sector jobs available in 2012 following a decline of 3,700 positions from 2011.

York has subsequently been placed at seventh in the list of cities with lowest private sector employment growth for that year.

There is also work to be done in the digital sector with York falling well below the national average for the number of postcodes achieving superfast broadband speeds in 2013, with just 58.4 per cent in the city compared to 72.6 per cent nationally putting York in the bottom ten for connectivity last year.

Last year York was named as the number one city in the UK for human resources and quality of life by the Local Futures Inward Investment Guide 2013.

The city also took the title of the second best city in the UK for talent in the Santander Towns and cities report 2013, and was listed in the top five best UK cities of business investment in the Muncipal Journal City Rankings 2013.

In the same year Times Higher Education said York was home to the best young university in the UK, while in July 2013 the city was highlighted in a Sunday Times report as one of the publication’s top ten hotspots for new development.