The changing spatial distribution of socio-economic groups employed in manufacturing in Great Britain, 1971–1981

Abstract

In this paper an attempt is made to study the spatial division of labour in Britain, through an investigation of the changing structure of employment in the manufacturing sector between 1971 and 1981. The separate impacts of loss in the volume of manufacturing employment, change in the balance between production and non-production activities in the occupational structure and the spatial shift of the population employed in manufacturing upon spatial variations in manufacturing employment change are tentatively identified. Data on the socio-economic composition of the population employed in manufacturing from the Small Area Statistics of the Censuses of Population for 1971 and 1981 are used to measure the impact of these processes at the local labour market area (LLMA) scale and to draw conclusions for the future employment prospects of different parts of Britain.