ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the economic factors behind the region's manufacturing and service activities, and the more localised character of labour supplies. Developments since 1951 have changed the relative picture of female employment considerably. The most rapidly growing parts of the region, in the Inner Zone and Coventry, employ a slightly higher proportion of women now than in 1951. This development has been concentrated into the services in the Inner Zone, where manufacturing growth has served mainly to replace the declining male employment in extractive activities. In 1961 the newer residential fringes of the conurbation supplied the most workers-twice as many as the next largest supplier, Birmingham. The underlying regional pattern, dominated by Birmingham, the remainder of the conurbation and by Coventry, with Worcester and Stafford as sub-dominants, is likely to remain a basic feature of the regional economy.
