Assessing the Regulationist View of History: An Analysis of Employment Change in America, 1940–1989

Abstract

This research empirically investigates the pattern of employment change within the United States between 1940 and 1989 using an analysis of variance model to partition employment change into that accounted for by (1) national trends in employment, (2) place-independent, sector-specific restructuring of employment, (3) place-specific, sector-independent shifts of employment, and (4) local employment conditions. Because we are concerned with a national system of capitalism, we use regulation theory to inform our research. According to regulation theory, capitalism is marked by periodic shifts in the regime of accumulation, or periods of crisis, interspersed with periods of relative stability. Our expectation is that periods of economic crisis will be marked by high levels of sector-specific restructuring in employment, whereas spatial shifts in employment induced by diffusion and everyday competition among capitalists occur on a continuous basis. Results of the analysis indicate that, not surprisingly, significant restructuring in employment has taken place. In particular, there has been a continual increase in restructuring from the 1940s to the 1980s. A series of annual change models reveals that within this gradual increase, individual years in the 1940s and 1980s appear to play particularly important roles.