Are your city's communities filled with high-earners or the unemployed? Are people flocking to live within the city limits, or are they moving away in droves?

A new survey has mapped out the UK cities according to a range of criteria, including those places which yield the highest earners, show the most economic and population growth and even those which have the worst educated citizens.

The study of 56 cities and towns by the Centre for Cities has picked out Milton Keynes as being among the high-performers.

The Buckinghamshire town tops the charts for annual employment growth rate with 3.1%, and is judged the second-fastest growing city in the UK thanks to an annual population growth rate of 1.3%

Liverpool, however, is a city of contrasts, with more people claiming benefit there - jointly with Glasgow - than anywhere else in the country.

But Liverpool is also the city with the best annual earnings growth rate, giving plenty of reason for optimism among those Liverpudlians who are working.

The centre compared the economic performance of cities and says it found examples of inequality across the UK.

To measure both equality and inequality, it used factors such as levels of income, employment, education, skills and training, health deprivation and disability and crime within different parts of cities.

Using this criteria, the report found that Manchester is the most unequal city in England.

The report said that "less than a mile from Manchester's new Piccadilly Station (and London's Canary Wharf), there are entrenched pockets of worklessness and underperforming housing markets".

READ THE FINDINGS Centre for Cities: Cities Outlook 2008 [6MB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader Download the reader here

Second in the "least equal" list is Bristol, followed by Liverpool, Birkenhead and Middlesbrough.

The most equal city in the UK is Cambridge, followed by Crawley, Aldershot, Worthing and Reading.

When it came to judging the levels of a population's education, the report found more than one-fifth of all working-age adults in Liverpool have no qualifications, and one-fifth of Hull's working-age population is claiming work-related benefits.

In Cambridge, 45% of residents hold a degree, compared to 14% in Hull.

More than 20% of the local populations of Birmingham and Liverpool are lacking basic qualifications, while Bristol has more degree qualified residents than other major cities, with nearly one in three holding a bachelor's degree.

Aldershot has the fewest benefit claimants for 2007, with 7% of the working age population making such claims.

MOST EQUAL UK CITIES 1. Cambridge 2. Crawley 3. Aldershot 4. Worthing 5. Reading 6. Chatham 7. York 8. Oxford 9. Swindon 10. Gloucester

In second place are Reading and Cambridge with 8%, followed by York, Oxford and Crawley on 9%.

Glasgow and Liverpool are the cities with the highest number of their population claiming benefits, each with 26% of the working age population making claims.

However, Liverpool is the city with the best annual earnings growth rate, with a figure of 5.6% - its average weekly earnings in 2006 was �473, up from �380 in 2002.

The report also found that many of the UK's largest urban areas continued to lose population over the past 10 years.

Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and Liverpool all registered declines.

But some English cities and new towns continued to post strong population gains, with Oxford, Milton Keynes, Telford and York all growing at an annual rate of 1% or more over the last decade.

Belfast, however, lost 21,100 of its residents between 2005 and 2006, and is also the city with the UK's lowest employment rate and the place which pays the lowest wages.

The best city for wages was London, with �675 being the average weekly wage. Next was Cambridge (�650), Reading (�646), Aldershot (�639) and Crawley (�624).

The report shows that, out of the top 10 improving cities and towns - based on employment growth from 1995 to 2005 - Milton Keynes had the best level of growth, showing an increase of 3.1%.

LOWEST WEEKLY AVERAGE WAGE 1. Belfast �395 2. Hull �401 3. Hastings �414 4. Blackburn �431 5. Mansfield �432 6. Stoke �436 7. Plymouth �438 8. Sunderland �440 9. Burnley �448 10. Grimsby �453

Northern cities generally had employment rates below the national average, although Doncaster, Sunderland, Sheffield and Warrington all ranked in the top 10 for rates of employment growth.

Communities minister Hazel Blears said cities had improved in the past decade.

"Where once the wrecking balls demolished the factories and warehouses in our city centres, today the cranes fill the skyline building the cities of the future.

"We all know there's more to be done, and issues like poverty to be tackled," she said.

"But let no-one fall into the trap of talking our cities down, or pretending things haven't improved in the past decade."

The Centre for Cities is an independent urban policy research unit that works to understand how and why economic growth and change takes place in Britain's cities.

Its director, Dermot Finch, said: "These figures show that it's less 'grim up north'.

"Cities like Warrington and Doncaster are on the up, but need to sustain this momentum over many years if they are going to catch up with the likes of York and Milton Keynes.

"Our biggest cities like Birmingham, Manchester and London are polarised within their own boundaries.

"They need to address the deep-rooted wealth inequalities on their own patch, by moving beyond constructing shiny new buildings if they are to continue to grow."

Population change