Service Employment in Large, Medium, and Small Metropolitan Areas in the United States

Abstract

The role of services in regional development has been one of the core topics of research in industrial geography. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between service employment and labor-market characteristics. The effect of localization economies on the distribution of service employment also is examined. The results show that the response of services to labor-market characteristics is relatively similar between largeand medium-sized metropolitan areas compared to large-and small-sized metropolitan areas. The significance of low-order white-collar and pink-collar work forces in attracting service employment at all levels of the metropolitan hierarchy implies that the impact on skills and earnings would be moderate. Manufacturing concentration, low labor quality, and a perception of higher wages are deterrents to growth in services, whereas localization economies and high-order labor are significant in determining certain types of service employment in metropolitan areas.The growth of service industries and their potential role in regional development have been among the core topics of research in the analysis of urban industrial structure (Walker

Location Matters: Comparing the Distribution of Economic Activity in the Canadian and Mexican Urban Systems

“…Indeed, central place theory may be described as a theory of preindustrial location and, as such, by no means restricted to the industrialized world. For producer services, the majority of studies (if not all) continue to confirm the strong positive relationship between city size and producer service specialization, with the most sophisticated high-order services concentrated in large metropolitan areas (Bagchi-Sen 1997;Coffey 1994;Daniels 1985Daniels , 1991Noyelle and Stanback 1984;Ó hUallacháin 1989). For the United States, finance, insurance, and real estate accounted for 14 percent of metro New York's labor force (1987 figures) compared to 6 percent for the nation.…”