Employment Change in Manufacturing Industries in the Western Province of Sri Lanka: A Shift and Share Analysis

Abstract

Within the last two decades manufacturing sector has been important to the economy of Sri Lanka in different manner. Particularly in terms of the employment generation and the location of manufacturing units Western Province leads other provinces of the country Accessibility as well as the availability of infrastructure facilities has played a vital role in attracting industries to the Western Province. However; datafor the 1990 decade indicate that manufacturing employment of the Western Province has beenfluctuating by loosing its relative significance. Therefore, it is important to analyze how the employment change in this province has taken place during past few years, as it is the core region of the country Such an analysis is useful to understand the future locational pattern of manufacturing industries in the province. Shift and share analysis is the technique used to analyse this employment change, as this paper attempts to evaluate the structural and regional influences for the employment change in the province. The analysis is based on the Annual Survey of Industries. It delimits the employment change in medium and large-scale manufacturing, as these surveys have only taken into consideration medium and large-scale enterprises for the enumeration. This analysis consists of typo main parts. First part is the shift analysis and the second part is shift and share analysis. Findings of the shift analysis indicate that the rate of employment decline of the Western Province is faster than the national rate of decline. Shift and share analysis emphasises that manufacturing establishments, which are not nationally well-distributed have a location preference to the Western Province. It is evident that industrial decentralization programme has particularly been responsible for this locational change in employment.