Economic Geography

Spatial concentrations of worklessness
Despite the tightening of labour markets, spatial concentrations of worklessness
at micro area level persist and remain a key concern for policy. So this is another
topic where researchers concerned with labour market geographies have an
opportunity to contribute to the debate in understanding how and why they
emerge and are maintained. Many people living in such concentrations face multi-
ple disadvantages, have low aspirations for work and study, and have extremely
narrow travel horizons. Moreover, often there are two or three generations 
out of work in the same family in the same neighbourhood. Local area studies

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Labour market geographies
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adopting both quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as evidence reviews
and evaluation studies commissioned by government, have offered important
insights into the processes underlying the lived experience of people in such
neighbourhoods. A report by the Social Exclusion Unit (2004) has suggested
that concentrations of worklessness happen for different reasons in different
places, but that three main explanations apply: first, changes in the nature 
and location of jobs; second, the impact of housing market ‘sorting’; and third,
area effects (describing a situation in which once people live in an area with many
people out of work their chances of finding work may be reduced simply by
where they live). As highlighted by Gordon (2003) with respect to adjustment
processes, understanding how spatial labour markets operate is crucial here. He
argues that local concentrations of worklessness persist because they have become
structural in character; such that they can only be removed by some combination
of supply-side measures targeted at all the links in local processes that reproduce
them, together with sustained full employment in the regions concerned.