The collapse of Birmingham's industrial economy was sudden and catastrophic. As late as 1976 the West Midlands region – with Birmingham as its principal economic dynamo – still had the highest GDP of any in the UK outside the South East, but within five years it was lowest in England. Birmingham itself lost 200,000 jobs between 1971 and 1981, with the losses concentrated in the manufacturing sector; relative earnings in the West Midlands went from being the highest in Britain in 1970 to the lowest in 1983. By 1982 the city's unemployment rate approached 20%, and was around twice that level in inner city areas including Aston, Handsworth and Sparkbrook.