Regional employment trends of wood-based industries in Germany’s forest cluster: a comparative shift-share analysis of post-reunification development

Abstract

After reunification in 1990, Germany's forest cluster developed anew and employment in the woodbased industries differentiated very quickly. With more than 900,000 employees, it is now considered one of the most important industrial sectors in the country. This paper analysed general trends in the development of employment of wood-based industries in the German forest cluster between 1999 and 2006. Shift-share analysis was considered to be the most appropriate way to determine regional differences in the subsection DD/20 'Manufacture of wood and wood products' of the code ''Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community, Revision 1.1'' (NACE): the sawmill industry, the wood-based panel industry, the wood construction industry, the wood-based packaging industry, and the miscellaneous wood products industry. This method decomposed the change of employment into three different components that are due to that change: national trends, (industrial) sectoral trends, and regional conditions. Employment in the selected woodbased industries showed a significantly larger decrease than overall trends in both the producing industries and the whole economy of Germany: a continual loss of employees could be observed over the time period, affecting almost all of the selected wood-based industries. However, federal states in western and eastern Germany experienced divergent trends between 1999 and 2006, as different absolute and relative regional share components indicated in the shift-share analysis. This method allows of identifying regional disparities and characterising regions with positive (mainly eastern federal states) and negative (mainly western federal states) rates of employment growth. The research suggests that positive employment trends in eastern Germany's wood-based industries can mainly be attributed to regional factors such as comparatively higher subsidies for new investments, lower labour costs, lower land values or infrastructural peculiarities.

Approaching the service-based economy: regionally differentiated employment growth in Czechia

“…The results of the shift-share analysis need to be interpreted and understood as signals only; they do not give any information on the ability of the region to maintain the dynamic (growing) sectors (Potomová and Letková, 2011). Also, the results cannot identify any locational advantages even if they signal some (Klein et al, 2009). The real forte of shift-share analysis is the discovery of employment change patterns across geographical areas (Ray and Harvey, 1995).…”

“…In the fi eld of regional studies, employment data are most commonly used for the calculation of the components of the shift-share analysis (e.g. Ray and Harvey, 1995;Mayor and López Menéndez, 2005;Bielik and Rajčániová, 2008;Klein et al, 2009;Herath et al, 2011;Kowalewski, 2011).…”

“…Moreover, as the region is a part of the reference area, it is assumed that any positive/negative employment change at the reference area will be mirrored by rising/declining change in regional employment (Klein et al, 2009). Industry mix effect (k ij ) measures the employment change that would have been experienced by the region if each of its industrial sectors had grown at the national rates for these sectors less the national growth effect (Herath et al, 2011).…”

“…Competitive effect (c ij ) measures the regional employment change in an industry conditioned by regional factors (Klein et al, 2009). It is calculated as the difference between the actual change in employment of sector i in region j and the employment change that would have occurred if each industrial sector i in region j had grown at the national level (Herath et al, 2011).…”

A Framework for Stakeholder Analysis of Forest and Wood-Based Industry Clusters – Case Study at the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

“…Examples for methodological developments and discussions concerning the cluster concept in forestry can be found in the area of spatial and statistical analysis [49][50][51], management [29,52] and marketing [53].…”