Unemployment and Industrial Structure in Great Britain

Sant M. E. C. (1967) Unemployment and Industrial Structure in Great Britain, Reg. Studies 1, 83–91. An attempt is made to correlate local rates of unemployment in Great Britain with the industrial structure of the cities and regions studied, using data for 1960–65. Using rank correlation analysis a high degree of correlation is found, and it appears that a given city or region owes its broad level of unemployment to its industrial structure. But when an attempt is made to measure the rate of unemployment that would be expected from the industrial structure, the method shows rather poor predictive power. It seems probable that the explanation lies in the varying competitive strength of firms within the same industry in different regions.