The Anatomy of Job GrowthAuthor(s): Colin MasonSource: Area, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Mar., 1986), p. 68Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20002271 .

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68 Annual Conference

The anatomy of job growth Given that the conference venue was in the heart of Britain's 'Silicon Valley', the IAADSG chose for its session the highly topical issue of job growth. This topicality attracted media interest-Professor Peter Hall appeared on the Radio Four 'Today' programme on the

morning of the session and the Financial Times requested copies of the papers. The themes of the session-addressed in seven papers-were the sectoral composition,

quality and locational characteristics of employment growth in the UK. Peter Hall (Reading) and Neil Marshall (Birmingham) both confirmed that the service sector is the exclusive source of new jobs in advanced countries. However, Hall emphasised that the UK has been less successful than either Japan or the USA in replacing lost manufacturing jobs by service sector employment. In his comprehensive review of reasons for the growth of producer services

Marshall suggested that one contributory factor might be the tendency for manufacturing firms to buy in from specialist service firms non-production activities which they formally undertook in-house.

The main source of new employment in recent years has been in the form of part-time jobs, much of it in the service sector. Alan Townsend (Durham) showed that most travel-to-work areas in Britain recorded increases in part-time employment between 1978 and 1981. Part-time employment is particularly prominent in the retailing sector. A paper by Sparks, Findlay and Dawson (Institute for Retail Studies, Stirling) demonstrated that the employment structure of superstores-a major source of new jobs in Britain in recent years-comprises in large part female part-time workers who often work a number of short shifts throughout the week.

Job creation in high technology sectors was revealed by Hall and Townsend as somewhat of a myth. Pascal Preston (Reading) showed that new information technology equipment industries in the UK actually lost employment between 1971 and 1981 (again in sharp contrast to the USA and Japan) and their export performance had deteriorated sharply. A somewhat less pessimistic picture was presented by Tim Kelly (Cambridge) in his paper on the UK com puter electronics industry. Although the sector has recorded a growing balance of trade deficit since 1980 it has nevertheless increased its employment between 1975 and 1983, primarily as a result of inward investment by US and Japanese multinationals, although new enterprise for

mation has also been significant, at least in numerical terms. The role of defence purchasing in contributing to the relative buoyancy of the electronics sector was alluded to by Hall and directly addressed by Michael Breheny (Reading). He highlighted the marked concentration of defence expenditure in the south east and suggested that the main reason for this lies in the need for face-to-face contact between defence equipment manufacturers and MOD 'contact points' and research establishments which are almost entirely concentrated in southern England.

The session clearly confirmed-if confirmation was needed-that the scope of industrial geography has moved well beyond its former exclusive concern with manufacturing activity. However, in the search for greater understanding of the growth and locational behaviour of non-manufacturing activities research must move beyond its present stage of analysing aggre gate data (much of which is, in any case, unsuitable) and towards studies at an enterprise level.

Colin Mason University of Southampton

Quantitative residential, retail and migration models The morning and afternoon sessions convened by Paul Longley (Town Planning, UWIST) considered a number of themes in current quantitative geography research. Neil Wrigley (Bristol) showed how recent research has permitted the extension of the NBD and Dirichlet

models to problems of store choice-a lively discussion endorsed the applicability of these

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