Local labour markets
A few years ago, a select committee was inquiring about skills, and the written evidence included a submission from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC). They made an assertion, as if we all know this, without referring to specific evidence, about local employment and none of the other submissions mentioned this justification for a focus on local labour markets promoted to schools.
“We know the majority of people in the UK live and work within 20 miles of where they grow up, and the numbers are even higher for those aged 18-24.”
The second part, applying more strongly to younger people, is obvious enough not to bother about it, but it does suggest the evidence they have in mind has detailed age stratification. If this is well known, people should have heard of it, so I consulted an eminent expert who intimated it was more like folk wisdom than actual evidence.
“This is a case of ‘well, surely everyone knows this’ but there is no evidence that I am aware of that can support this, nor is it a meaningful statement. If you think about it, the majority of the UK population lives in large towns and cities (about 83% live in urban areas). If you draw a 20 mile radius circle around each urban area, then you end up covering more than 83% of the population. I am not sure that this then leads to a statistic about where people ‘grew up’ (presumably the area they lived in for the majority of time when under the age of 18 years), versus the place in which they now live and work.”
Thence instead of looking for published estimates, I had a think about what sort of data source we would need, to link where people ‘grew up’ to where they work. And to have enough detail to make that link as an assertion across the UK, not just in London of some major cities, across the life course, as well as for young people specifically. Although birth cohort studies look in this direction, one would need to look at several to get the age pattern, and the achieved sample follow up is fairly modest for this purpose. The obvious indicator for a place someone grew up would be where they went to school, but we don’t record data well enough to connect all of that up and yet we do have a more general population dataset.
Of course the official record where everyone is recorded at their home address is the census, which is a decennial snapshot, but a 1% sample (four birth days spaced throughout the year) is linked up for researchers. And the census longitudinal survey has a website which helpfully lists all the publications approved researchers produced using the data. That indicates no obvious source for a statistic like this, but several projects trying to understand geographical and social mobility, mostly done by someone who lives down the road from me. Small world.
The aims of research in the application are more about regional migration, understanding the people who move, not those who stay (they are less interesting). So describing the association with better economic and employment outcomes, moving specifically to the south east of England, but also for other urban centres. People also return to their home region, leading to the analogy of helping people up, by escalators or the elevator of the capital, but this could be viewed in complementary inefficiency of local labour markets. Cities and regions ought to be able to signal demand for specific skills to local training institutions which create the supply, matching people more efficiently.
The UK is dominated by London which provides and elevator which assists mobility including for people who remigrate, but regionally there are also escalators. Progression within employment is the basis of the escalator effect, reflecting several features of a tighter labour market and larger economic concentration. Greater investment by employers in skills development due to recruitment challenges or transfer of employment locally when opportunities are limited internally manifest. Networks informally can develop but would also be present before employment begins, through family and other community connections. (Economists make a great show of controlling for selection of other factors which drive outcomes.)
Although there are crude economic returns to agglomeration these are concentrated in services which are about people, and corporate role segmentation. Manufacturing has been identified as more specialised with sophisticated facilities established as sunk costs in particular locations, in towns in the UK. Some of these are industrial activities which are almost invisible, operating underground for access and environmental reasons. So apprenticeships have been a focus of policy for such roles around the country lately, addressing local demand and local opportunity, for specialised technicians particularly. However, the main concern is for first and subsequent employment of young people, in their home region.
The question of what schools ought to do in the midst of the evidence about mobility of the socio-spatial dynamics is complicated. Ralf Darhendorf theorised life chances in the context of ligatures and options, and the market approach does not make much allowance for constraints on mobility. And the ascription to established professions (which often have arbitrarily high bars to entry) contrasts the open entry to growing roles, which may have some risks but allow for transfer between them. An argument for grammar schools saw them placed in every locality but confusion about what they were expected to do locally, with high achievers finding a route out.
All schools need to understand what is happening locally and make and sustain connections personally, but none of the performance expectations say so. Unfortunately local labour market information is not specific enough for any of the parties involved and the engagement is from public bodies describing trends. Children can be inspired by many things, but parents know the benefit of making connections and finding a placement for work experience themselves. But I don’t believe anyone has thought hard about what it means that most people stay to work within such a short distance of where they grew up.