For me, the Birmingham Post’s Rich List is a guilty pleasure.

Who’s up, who’s down and who’s made the most money this year – that’s what I want to find out when I read through our annual report.

But there’s a serious side to the Rich List too. It’s a chance to celebrate success, and to say loud and clear that the West Midlands is a place where industry can grown and entrepreneurs can thrive.

For every person featured in our pages, there are a hundred more who may never earn a place in the Rich List but have nonetheless founded a business or seen their company grow.

But that’s not the story across the West Midlands. Over the past couple of years, we have also carried regular reports about growing unemployment in the region.

This week, the paper published both the Rich List and a report unemployment rising by 48,000 in the three months to November.

This rise in unemployment is a double blow because the jobless total, which rose dramatically in the West Midlands after the banking crisis, had begun to fall.

Now it seems to be on its way back up again. The unemployment figures are a reminder that not everybody in the West Midlands has shared in the region’s wealth.

Ladywood has the highest unemployment rate in the country, for example. Others, such as Hodge Hill, are not far behind.

And the economic downturn made inequality worse.

One Tory politician got into trouble for suggesting some people had “never had it so good”. Well, there are people out there whose earnings weren’t much affected by the crisis, but benefited from cut-price interest rates.

They may have been cushioned from the effects of the downturn – or even seen their disposable income rise.

At the same time, the number of people facing the misery of unemployment has also risen, and almost doubled in the West Midlands.

There are debates about the role that Government needs to play in restoring the nation’s fortunes.

I doubt anybody disputes that the road to prosperity is a healthy industrial base, providing employment and generating the tax revenue.

The Rich List is partly, at least, a celebration of those people who create the wealth and jobs the region needs more than ever.