ABSTRACT
The most important feature of the regional pattern of change in manufacturing is the influence of national trends in manufacturing employment. This chapter presents the results of a shift-share analysis of manufacturing employment change in each region between 1952 and 1979 using employment data which has been fully standardized to permit comparability through time. The injection of industry from outside has been provided mainly by regional policy, the fourth major factor responsible for regional differences in manufacturing employment change. In fact the urban-rural shift appears to have accelerated significantly after 1960, for reasons largely unconnected with regional policy, and because the mix of urban and rural areas varies from region to region this consequently altered underlying regional trends. The major difficulty in measuring the impact of regional policy is that the other influences on employment change must be successfully disentangled.
