Western Europe’s foreign investors created more jobs in the services sector than in industry for the first time last year, evidence that the region is succeeding in its evolution towards a knowledge-based economy.

Factory workers are being shunned for researchers, IT consultants and administrative staff, according to Ernst & Young’s annual survey of European Attractiveness, published on Thursday at the World Investment Conference in La Baule, France. It shows that industrial jobs accounted for just 40 per cent of new foreign direct investment posts in western Europe in 2007, against 57 per cent in 2006.