Geography

Employment

Employment refers to the state of having a paid job or being engaged in work for a wage or salary. It is a crucial aspect of economic development and is influenced by various factors such as education, skills, and location. In Geography, the study of employment patterns and trends can provide insights into the social and economic dynamics of a region.

Written by Perlego with AI-assistance

6 Key excerpts on "Employment"

  • Book cover image for: Sociological Perspectives on Labor Markets
    In regard to mobility, geography implies that there are certain obstacles to be overcome. Employers' prospects of recruiting people from outside of the local area are related to individuals' willingness and capability to commute or move. Another option is to move jobs to places where suitable employees are available. 'Suitable' labor sometimes translates into 'cheap' labor, but- as Manuel Castells (1996: 93) has pointed out- it may also be a matter of workers who have proper skills or who are easily controlled. When employers make decisions on allocation of production and other activities, the potential supply of workers can be a crucial factor, although there are also many other important circumstances to consider. Among other things, the discussion on globalization focuses on how jobs are located and relocated with respect to countries, regions, cities, etc. (see, e.g., Castells 1996: Ch. 2). One essential development in recent decades, the deindustrialization of the advanced Western economies, has been accompanied by a considerable expansion of industrial Employment in some other countries. Guy Standing (1999: 64) has suggested that global- ization must not lead to increasing labor mobility, since multinational firms can rather easily redistribute their jobs. This may be true in many cases, but there can be severe obstacles to such redistributions. Decisions on Employment allocation usually involve a complex set of factors besides the supply of suitable labor: distance from raw materials, from consumer markets, and from business partners, the hosting country's infrastructure and political stability, etc. Employers have most frequently been considered the main actors, and sometimes the only significant actors, in shaping the economic geography 42 Sociological Perspectives on Labor Markets of capitalism. In contrast, Andrew Herod (2001) has argued that workers and organized labor should also be attributed a decisive role in spatial change.
  • Book cover image for: Geographies of Labour Market Inequality
    • Ron Martin, Philip S. Morrison(Authors)
    • 2003(Publication Date)
    • Routledge
      (Publisher)

    Introduction

    Passage contains an image

    1 Thinking about the geographies of labour

    Ron Martin and Philip S. Morrison

    The new focus on labour geographies

    Over the past decade, the geography of the labour market has received increasing attention from both academic analysts and policy-makers alike. In economic geography, for example, research into labour and labour markets has been growing apace (for example, Allen and Henry, 1997; Hanson and Pratt, 1992, 1995; Clark, 1989; Herod, 1995, 1997; Lawless et al., 1998; McDowell, 1997; Martin, 1986; 2000; Martin et al., 1996; Morrison, 1990; Peck, 1989, 1992, 1996; Regional Studies, 1996). Basic to this new-found focus is the belief that the labour market has an intrinsically local or spatially constituted level of operation and regulation, that the creation and destruction of jobs, and the processes of Employment, unEmployment and wage setting, and the institutional and social regulation of these processes, are, to some extent at least, geographically constituted. It is within specific spatial settings and contexts – local and regional labour markets – that workers seek Employment and employers hire and fire workers, that particular forms of Employment structures evolve, that specific Employment practices, work cultures and labour relations become established, and particular institutionalised modes of labour regulation emerge or are imposed. While it would certainly be an exaggeration to claim that this growing literature constitutes a fully articulated spatial theory of labour markets, the topic is at last firmly established as a key subject of geographical enquiry.
    At the same time, economists have also discovered geography in their theorisations and analyses of the labour market. Historically, economists have not assigned much significance to the geography of the labour market (see the critique by Corina, 1972). Even in the work of the most influential labour economists, the labour market was a curiously spaceless entity, either a purely abstract (micro-economic) construct or a macro-economic aggregate. In the main, the role of location in the functioning and operation of labour market processes tended to be viewed as secondary, and was used either as a means of introducing barriers, such as incomplete information or incomplete mobility, into the free functioning of market (Rees and Schultz, 1970; Robinson, 1970), or as a way of identifying those markets experiencing different Employment conditions (for example, Mackay et al., 1971). However, at least two recent texts in labour economics have begun to recognise the geography inherent in labour markets (see, for example, Bosworth et al
  • Book cover image for: Applied Human Geography
    Population geography has a superior place in economic geography. This is because the individuals, as the chief productive force, are hired in all the economic departments and, up to a point, their place has an all-inclusive importance. The population is at one and the similar time the creator as well as the customer of material goods. Population geography observations, frameworks and structures the forms of settlement in association to the spatial nature of production, the features of the geographical atmosphere, the financial topographical condition of population Employment , and population relocations. Together with changes in the natural development of population, migrations describe the course of regional relocation of population. A prominent place is provided to the categorization and typology of the inhabited points. One declaration that can be made without the restriction is that the distinction between population geography and demography, sociology, or economics can be hard to find. Population Geographies 129 Figure 6.4: Population geography explains the various factors of the popula-tions all over the world along with the effects of population on various factors such as economy and finances. Source: https://www.maxpixel.net/static/photo/1x/Global-International-World-Population-Globalization-3340864.jpg The consensus is that the population demographers pay more attention on the fertility studies. On the other hand, the population geographers tend to pay more attention on migration. With the beginning of more-sophisticated approaches, in specific those connected to GIS or remote sensing, and the ever-increasing accessibility of data at numerous spatial scales, the fundamental significance of space and geography has become more common in in the studies of the population beyond the social sciences.
  • Book cover image for: Unemployment and Social Exclusion
    eBook - ePub

    Unemployment and Social Exclusion

    Landscapes of Labour inequality and Social Exclusion

    • Sally Hardy, Paul Lawless, Ron Martin(Authors)
    • 2013(Publication Date)
    • Routledge
      (Publisher)
    where they are drawn, have an impact on the picture of unEmployment or non-Employment that is obtained. The use of more than one areal framework in the analyses below permits a variety of perspectives and enables insights into confirmatory or contradictory patterns of spatial variation at different geographical scales. However, it should be borne in mind that the interpretation of indicators may vary at different spatial scales.

    Key Features of Continuity and Change in the Geography of UnEmployment and Non-Employment

    ‘Explaining' changes in the spatial distribution of unEmployment and non-Employment

    Changes in unEmployment may arise for a number of different reasons, since unEmployment is a function of the interaction of changes in labour supply and labour demand (see Beatty and Fothergill 1994 ; Green and Owen 1991 ). In simplistic terms, unEmployment increases may occur in the face of Employment growth if growth in the population seeking work (as a result of natural change, in-migration or participation increase) outstrips the increase in jobs available, as well as in circumstances of Employment decline (when labour supply reductions through out-migration and withdrawal from the labour force are outstripped by job losses). Hence in attempting to ‘explain’ unEmployment changes in different areas, it is important to bear in mind how supply and demand factors interact in different ways in different areas to produce such changes.
    Application of a labour market accounts methodology to local labour market areas shows that some large cities (such as Liverpool) would have had a higher unEmployment rate if it were not for net out-migration, while in some towns (such as Milton Keynes) net in-migration and natural increases have been key factors in increasing the unEmployment rate despite the expansion of Employment opportunities. Similarly, research on recent changes in Employment and unEmployment in coal-mining communities reveals that in the face of the demise of jobs in mining and related industries, many working age adults withdrew’ from the labour force (that is, became inactive) rather than becoming unemployed (Beatty and Fothergill 1994 ; see also Chapter 5
  • Book cover image for: Economic and Social Geography
    • R. Knowles, J. Wareing(Authors)
    • 2014(Publication Date)
    • Made Simple
      (Publisher)
    PART ONE: THE STUDY OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY CHAPTER ONE MAN AND ENVIRONMENT Geography is currently going through an exciting period in its development as new problems are identified and new methods of analysis are formulated. It is not easy to say precisely what geography is about because geographers often hold different views of the subject, and these views change from time to time, but this is not surprising since geographers are interested in a very wide range of problems and rapid advances are being made in the subject, as they are in all branches of knowledge. Because geography involves such a wide range of knowledge, the subject has been divided into two major areas of study. The first of these is physical geography, which is concerned with the physical environment of landforms, weather and climate, soils, and plants and animals (see Physical Geography Made Simple). The second is human geography, which is concerned with man's activities over the surface of the earth. In many ways this is a false distinction since the activities of man take place within the physical environment, and the physical environment is considerably affected by these activities, but the divi-sion is a useful one and in this book the physical environment will only be considered in relation to man. Human geography can be studied in two principal ways. First, the earth's surface can be studied part by part. This is the approach of regional geography, which seeks to understand the unique character of an area as produced by the interaction of human activity and the physical environment. Secondly, human activity over the earth's surface can be studied part by part. This is the approach of systematic geography, which isolates particular elements such as agriculture, industry or transport, and seeks to understand their spatial patterns and the processes which have produced them.
  • Book cover image for: 21st Century Geography: A Reference Handbook
    70 GEOGRAPHY AS A PROFESSION M. BETH SCHLEMPER University of Toledo E very geographer, sooner or later, gets asked what it is that they do for a living with a degree in geography. A typical discussion develops around comments and questions such as, You must like rocks and minerals, or Do you know all of the states and capitals? While I must admit to having a rock and mineral collection, I explain that this falls more into the realm of geology than geography. To complicate matters, I also admit to knowing all of the states and capitals, but I don't want to leave the inquirer with the impression that this is the only thing that geographers do. When confronted with a similar situation, Yi-Fu Tuan explained: I start with a definitionpopular duringthe late 1940sand early 1950s: geography is the study of the earth as the home of people. I like this definition for a number of reasons, one of which is that it makes immediately clear that geography, for all the technical sophistication of its specialized subfields, is not remote or esoteric knowledge but rather a basic human concern. (Tuan, 1991, p. 99) After being asked at a party what he does for a living as a geographer, Peter Gould wrote, One could say, "look at the world from a spatial perspective, in a sense through spatial spectacles," or "Well, actually, I'm a spatial analyst," both of which would be true up to a point. But such phrases convey no meaning to most people. (Gould, 1985,p.4) What do geographers mean when they claim that they think spatially and apply a spatial perspective to life's opportunities, problems, and choices? Preston E. James suggested that "today, as in the past, geography is concerned with the arrangement of things on the face of the earth, and with associations of things that give character to particular places" (James, 1954, p. 4). Although he was writing more specifically about the first half of the 20th century, his explanation remains appropriate for the 21 st century.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.