ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will investigate the link between international trade and labour markets. After setting the scene with some general observations about trade trends and patterns, we will explain what globalisation is and briefly set out how it has emerged before pointing to some of the implications more integrated international economic activity have for labour markets. We shall examine the relative shift in employment and therefore, by implication, in labour demand in terms of the deindustrialisation thesis. This allows us to set the ‘shake out’ of manufacturing industry, that is the rapid decline in employment after 1979 against the longer-term reduction in the importance of manufacturing in industrialised countries.
