Structural Adjustment and the Sectoral and Geographical Mobility of Labour

Abstract

Conventional methods for analysing worker flows often focus on gross flows or transition probabilities. This is not necessarily informative for identifying the scale of labour 'adjustment' in an economy in the sense of the expansion and decline of industries. We develop a method that relates the individual characteristics of workers to net, rather than gross flows. Our method also allows for interactions between the regional and sectoral mobility of labour. We apply this to the UK using data from the Labour Force Survey over a period of significant structural change, and quantify the relative importance of education and housing tenure on regional and sectoral mobility.

Keywords: Mobility, adjustment

JEL Classification: C25, J60, J61