Urban Escalators and Interregional Elevators: The Difference that Location, Mobility, and Sectoral Specialisation Make to Occupational Progression

Ian Gordon, Tony Champion and Mike Coombes

Environment and Planning A, 2015, vol. 47, issue 3, 588-606

Abstract: This paper uses evidence from the Longitudinal Study for England and Wales to examine the influence on occupational advancement of the city-region of residence (an escalator effect) and of relocation between city-regions (an elevator effect). It shows both effects to be substantively important, though less so than the sector of employment. Elevator effects are found to be associated with moves from slacker to tighter regional labour markets. Escalator effects, on the other hand, are linked with residence in larger urban agglomerations, though not specifically London, but also across most of the Greater South East and in second-order or third-order city-regions elsewhere. Sectoral escalator effects are found to be particularly strong in knowledge-intensive activities, with concentrations of these, as of other advanced job types (rather than of graduate labour), contributing strongly to the more dynamic city-regional escalators. The impact of the geographic effects is found to vary substantially with both observed and unobserved personal characteristics, being substantially stronger for the young and for those whose unobserved attributes (eg, dynamic human capital) generally boost rates of occupational advance.

Keywords: escalator region; elevator effect; city-region; labour migration; career progression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Urban Escalators and Inter-regional Elevators: The Difference that Location, Mobility and Sectoral Specialisation make to Occupational Progression (2013)
Working Paper: Urban escalators and inter-regional elevators: the difference that location, mobility and sectoral specialisation make to occupational progression (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:47:y:2015:i:3:p:588-606

DOI: 10.1068/a130125p

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