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This paper studies redundant workers’ industrial and geographical mobility, and the consequences of post-redundancy mobility for regional policy strategies. This is accomplished by means of a database covering all workers who became redundant in major shutdowns or cutbacks in Sweden between 1990 and 2005. Frequencies of industrial and geographical mobility are described over time, and the influence of some important characteristics that make workers more likely to be subject to particular forms of mobilities are assessed. We find that re-employment rates vary extensively across industries and time. Whereas going back to the same or related industries is the most common re-employment strategy among workers who find a new job in the first year, workers who do not benefit from quick re-employment are increasingly squeezed out to new job fields and regions. Older workers and workers with high vested interest in their original industries usually employ a ‘same-industry/same-region’ strategy. This most frequent, and perhaps often most attractive, same-industry strategy comes at a cost, however. Individuals who instead pursue other mobility strategies have a lower risk of suffering from another major redundancy in the future. Thus, in terms of regional policy, strategies promoting diversification to related industries after major redundancies seem to be much more important than trying to retain workers in their old industry. In this case the route via education (university or vocational training) is important, as it increases the likelihood of successfully changing industry at time of re-employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses how the composition of industry structures, skills, and human capital is related to regional development in peripheral and central locations. We do this by means of ordinary least squares models to analyse the relationship between growth in purchasing power and employment growth between 2001 and 2008 as well as a selection of variables constructed via register data of the total population in Sweden. The analysis demonstrates an evident spatial division of postindustrial development that larger regions benefit relatively more from than smaller regions do. The empirical findings indicate that a transition towards more knowledge-intensive sectors and a higher educated labour force has the strongest impact on development in the largest Swedish regions, while a transition from manual skills towards more creative skills shows a positive relationship only with development in medium-sized regions. Consequently, the paper argues that the recent appraisal of the knowledge-based economy benefits mainly the largest urban regions, meaning that regional size is an important parameter when discussing trajectories of regional development and the adaption to contemporary economic development paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]