Uneven shifts: the geography of occupational change in France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, 1992–2018

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Version: Final published version
License: CC BY 4.0
Serval ID
serval:BIB_317E5350BAC2
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Uneven shifts: the geography of occupational change in France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, 1992–2018
Journal
European Societies
Author(s)
Morris Katy, Oesch Daniel
ISSN
1461-6696
1469-8307
Publication state
Published
Issued date
09/05/2025
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
27
Number
1
Pages
4-30
Language
english
Abstract
Amid renewed interest in geographical inequalities in life chances and an ongoing debate about occupational upgrading versus polarisation, we investigate how the occupational structure changed across NUTS-2 regions in France, Italy, Spain and the UK between 1992 and 2018. Against the expectation that national upgrading trends may mask a diversity of regional upgrading, downgrading and polarisation experiences, EU Labour Force Survey data show clear and unambiguous upgrading. In every region, employment in high quality jobs grew while employment in low quality jobs shrank. These shifts were often large in magnitude: the proportion of employment in high quality jobs increased by more than 10 percentage points in two thirds of the regions studied. However, there was considerable heterogeneity in the rate and type of occupational upgrading. Strong upgrading and employment growth in the economic capital regions of Île-de-France (Paris), Lombardy, Madrid and London contrasted with weaker upgrading and sluggish (or even negative) employment growth in regions like Lorraine, Sicily, Extremadura and the West Midlands. That these and many regions have yet to achieve the same proportion of high quality jobs that the economic capitals possessed in 1992 highlights the greater relative difficulty of ascending to the top of the occupational structure in some places than in others.
Keywords
Employment, occupational change, regional inequality, structural change, regional economies, Europe
Open Access
Yes
Funding(s)
Swiss National Science Foundation / Projects
Create date
13/05/2025 12:08
Last modification date
14/05/2025 7:13
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