The Dynamic Resilience of Urban Labour Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the dynamic structure of urban labour networks, revealing how city size influences the diffusion of economic and technological properties within job markets, with implications for policy and growth.

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of city job networks to understand their diffusive properties and how these vary with city size, offering new insights into urban labour market dynamics.

Findings

Diffusive properties vary significantly with city size.

Certain occupations are key in promoting property diffusion.

Urban labour networks exhibit complex, size-dependent dynamics.

Abstract

Understanding and potentially predicting or even controlling urban labour markets represents a great challenge for workers and policy makers alike. Cities are effective engines of economic growth and prosperity and incubate complex dynamics within their labour market, and the labour markets they support demonstrate considerable diversity. This presents a challenge to policy makers who would like to optimise labour markets to benefit workers, promote economic growth and manage the impact of technological change. While much previous work has studied the economic characteristics of cities as a function of size and examined the exposure of urban economies to automation, this has often been from a static perspective. In this work we examine the structure of city job networks to uncover the diffusive properties. More specifically, we identify the occupations which are most important in promoting the diffusion of beneficial or deleterious properties. We find that these properties vary considerably with city size.