Economy
The economy of the town no longer depends on the chalybeate spring. Hardly anyone comes to the town purely to take the waters.
As of 2002 there were around 50,000 people employed in the borough of Tunbridge Wells. The largest sector of the local economy consists of hotels, restaurants, and retail (the centrally located Royal Victoria Place shopping centre, opened in 1992, covers 29,414 square metres (96,503 ft)), which accounts for around 30% of all jobs; the finance and business sector makes up just under a quarter of jobs, as does the public administration, education and health sector. Royal Tunbridge Wells is arguably the most important retail centre between London and Hastings.
The largest single employer in the town used to be the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, at the Kent and Sussex and Pembury Hospitals, employing around 2,500 people; the largest single commercial employer was AXA PPP healthcare, employing around 1700. Tunbridge Wells enjoys a relatively low unemployment rate of around 1.0% as of August 2008, compared to a UK national rate of around 5.4%.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)