Impacts Of Deindustrialization

In the past few decades there has been a rapid shift in the economy from a largely industrial based economy to a service based economy. This deindustrialization has had far reaching effects on the inner city and in particular it’s lower and lower middle class workers. Deindustrialization is a process of social and economic change caused by the removal or reduction of industrial companies. As a result jobs within the industrial and manufacturing industry are drastically reduced. This decrease in industrial jobs also coincides with an increase in service sector jobs. In 2000 there is stated to be 20 million less manufacturing jobs than in 1990, however non-retail service jobs increased by 21 million from 1990 to 2000 and retail by 6 million1. This combination of deindustrialization and loss of manufacturing jobs
One such impact is the loss in income and often employment of lower class city residents, due to the movement of many factories to the suburbs and the comparatively low pay of service jobs available in the city. Most ex-factory workers also can’t access the higher paying professional and technical service jobs, as they require high levels of education and training creating a skill-job mismatch. Additionally, there is a job-spatial mismatch as the new jobs being created were predominantly in the growing suburbs where poor and minority groups were unable to move due to high costs and policies that disadvantaged them economically such as redlining. Deindustrialization also caused the formation of the global economy and globalization of industry in cities. These global cities became too expensive for many middle-class to live in and so a middle class exodus occurred while simultaneously many