The policy challenge: As mid-paid production and office jobs disappear, lower-skilled workers increasingly rely on service and sales work. Without action to ensure decent working conditions in these sectors, we risk creating "master-servant societies“, especially in large cities.
Gina-Julia Westenberger
🛠️ vs 💻 : Since the early 1990s, it was predicted that global cities like Frankfurt, London, and New York would see growth in high-wage professional and low-wage service jobs while mid-level jobs declined. However, recent research shows occupational upgrading across Europe.
Using UK census and German social security data (SIAB), we test whether the occupational class structures of London and Berlin have evolved very differently to the ones of Leeds and Liverpool or Dortmund and Düsseldorf, and differently in large cities compared to the country as a whole.
🔎 Our study re-examines this thesis by analyzing occupational change in the ten largest cities of Germany and the UK from 1991 to 2021.
🏙️ ❌ In sum, we reject the "winner-take-all" thesis: polarization isn't unique to the largest cities, nor is strong professional job growth limited to global cities like London and Berlin. Instead polarised upgrading applies more generally to post-industrial UK and, to a lesser extent, Germany.
Many thanks also to Martin Ballaschk for the interesting article!
🗞️ From working-class to expert city: How has Berlin's employment structure changed over the past 30 years?
I discussed our study on polarized upgrading (with Daniel Oesch and @katymorris.bsky.social ) with @tagesspiegel.de
👉 Full article (in German): www.tagesspiegel.de/wissen/von-d...
Gina-Julia Westenberger
German cities show weaker polarization and stronger upgrading, led by Berlin and Munich's growth in professional roles. Although they added fewer low-skilled service jobs than major UK cities, cities such as Frankfurt, Leipzig, and Düsseldorf also saw an expansion of lower-skilled jobs.
In the UK, we find some polarization: London experienced strong upgrading with growth in professional and managerial roles, moderate expansion in low-skilled service work, and sharp clerical job losses. Birmingham,
Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle followed similar polarized upgrading.
Gina-Julia Westenberger
Gina-Julia Westenberger
And for everyone interested in our study: doi.org/10.1186/s126...
