US manufacturing policies increasingly steer resources toward the act of innovation. Emerging case-study evidence suggests that this innovation leads to manufacturing job growth. However, the case-study evidence from which this claim is assembled is incomplete and selective. Using regional-level industry-occupation data for US manufacturing sectors, we test the contribution of manufacturing innovation activities to production employment growth within US regions, for the 2000–2006 and 2006–2010 periods. While production employment continued to disperse from sites of historical manufacturing concentration over both time periods, innovation activities provided some advantages. From 2000 to 2006, regions with higher innovation concentrations in high-tech and medium–low technology industries, experienced slower rates of production employment decline. From 2006 to 2010, a period spanning the Great Recession, innovation activities were associated with reduced production job losses for industries of all technology levels. These results indicate that innovation has benefits beyond high-technology industries, but that those benefits are limited and selective.
AcsZVargaA (2002) Geography, endogenous growth, and innovation. International Regional Science Review25(1): 132–148.
2.
AgrawalAKapurDMcHaleJ (2008) How do spatial and social proximity influence knowledge flows? Evidence from patent data. Journal of Urban Economics64(2): 258–269.
3.
BergerS (2013) Making in America: From Innovation to Market. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
4.
BreauSKoglerDBoltonK (2014) On the relationship between innovation and wage inequality: New evidence from Canadian cities. Economic Geography90(4): 351–373.
5.
CampS (2005) The Innovation-Entrepreneurship NEXUS: A National Assessment of Entrepreneurship and Regional Economic Growth and Development. Washington, DC: Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy.
6.
ChristophersonS (2009) Manufacturing: Up from the ashes. Democracy: A Journal of Ideas14: 25–30.
7.
ChristophersonSClarkJ (2007) Remaking Regional Economies. London and New York: Routledge.
8.
ChristophersonSClarkJ (2010) Limits to ‘The learning region’: What university-centered economic development can (and cannot) do to create knowledge-based regional economies. Local Economy25(2): 120–130.
9.
ClarkJ (2013) Working Regions: Reconnecting Innovation and Production in the Knowledge Economy. London: Routledge.
10.
ClarkJ (2014) Siting ‘scientific spaces’ in the US: The push and pull of regional development strategies and national innovation policies. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy32(5): 880–895.
11.
CoeNMHessMYeungHWet al. (2004) ‘Globalizing’ regional development: A global production networks perspective. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers29(4): 468–484.
12.
CookeP (2001) Regional innovation systems, clusters, and the knowledge economy. Industrial and Corporate Change10(4): 945–974.
13.
DickenP (2003) Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century. New York: Guilford Press.
14.
DoneganMLoweN (2008) Inequality in the creative city: Is there still a place for ‘old-fashioned’ institutions?Economic Development Quarterly22(1): 46–62.
15.
DoussardMSchrockG (2015) Uneven decline: Linking historical patterns and processes of industrial restructuring to future growth trajectories. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society8(2): 149–165.
16.
DoussardMPeckJTheodoreN (2009) After deindustrialization: Uneven growth and economic inequality in ‘postindustrial’ Chicago. Economic Geography85(2): 183–207.
17.
FeldmanMPFrancisJL (2003) Fortune favours the prepared region: The case of entrepreneurship and the capitol region biotechnology cluster. European Planning Studies11(7): 765–788.
18.
FeldmanMPLendelI (2010) Under the lens: The geography of optical science as an emerging industry. Economic Geography86(2): 147–171.
19.
FeserEJ (1998) Enterprises, external economies, and economic development. Journal of Planning Literature12(3): 283–302.
20.
FeserEJ (2003) What regions do rather than make: A proposed set of knowledge-based occupation clusters. Urban Studies40(10): 1937–1958.
21.
FritschMSlavtchevV (2011) Determinants of the efficiency of regional innovation systems. Regional Studies45(7): 905–918.
22.
GertlerMSVinodraiT (2009) Life sciences and regional innovation: One path or many?European Planning Studies17(2): 235–261.
23.
GlasmeierA (1988) Factors governing the development of high tech industry agglomerations: A tale of three cities. Regional Studies22(4): 287–301.
24.
GlasmeierAKLeichenkoRM (1996) From free market rhetoric to free market reality: The future of the US South in an era of globalization. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research20(4): 601–615.
25.
HallB (2011) Innovation and productivity. Working paper #17178. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research.
26.
HerrigelG (2010) Manufacturing Possibilities: Creative Action and Industrial Recomposition in the United States, Germany, and Japan. New York: Oxford University Press.
27.
KemenyTRigbyD (2012) Trading away what kind of jobs? Globalization, trade and tasks in the US economy. Review of World Economics148(1): 1–16.
28.
LeeNRodríguez-PoseA (2013) Innovation and spatial inequality in Europe and USA. Journal of Economic Geography13(1): 1–22.
29.
LoweNJ (2007) Job creation and the knowledge economy: Lessons from North Carolina’s life science manufacturing initiative. Economic Development Quarterly21(4): 339–353.
30.
MarkusenA (1985) Profit Cycles, Oligopoly, and Regional Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
31.
MarkusenA (1996) Sticky places in slippery space: A typology of industrial districts. Economic Geography72(3): 293–313.
32.
MarkusenA (1999) Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence, policy distance: The case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies. Regional Studies33(9): 869–884.
33.
MarkusenA (2004) Targeting occupations in regional and community economic development. Journal of the American Planning Association70(3): 253–268.
34.
MarkusenAHallPGlasmeierA (1986) High Tech America: The What, How, Where, and Why of the Sunrise Industries. Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin.
35.
MasseyDMeeganR (1978) Industrial restructuring versus the cities. Urban Studies15: 273–288.
36.
PierceJRSchottPK (2012) The Surprisingly Swift Decline of US Manufacturing Employment. Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research.
37.
Rodríguez-PoseACrescenziR (2008) Research and development, spillovers, innovation systems, and the genesis of regional growth in Europe. Regional Studies42(1): 51–67.
38.
RugglesSSobekMAlexanderTet al. (2004) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS): Version 3.0. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Population Center. Available at: http://www.ipums.org.
39.
SassenS (2000) The global city: Strategic site/new frontier. American Studies41(2/3): 79–95.
40.
SaxenianAL (1996) Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
41.
ScottAJ (2008) Social Economy of the Metropolis. New York: Oxford University Press.
42.
ShearmurR (2012) Are cities the font of innovation? A critical review of the literature on cities and innovation. Cities29: S9–S18.
43.
StorperM (1997) The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: The Guilford Press.
44.
StorperMWalkerR (1989) The Capitalist Imperative: Territory, Technology, and Industrial Growth. New York: Basic Books.
45.
United National Statistics Division (n.d.) International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities, Rev.3. Available at: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cr/registry/regcst.asp?Cl=2 (accessed 24 August 2016).
46.
VanchanVMacPhersonA (2008) The recent growth performance of US firms in the industrial design sector: An exploratory study. Industry and Innovation15(1): 1–17.
47.
WalksRA (2011) Economic restructuring and trajectories of socio-spatial polarization in the twenty-first-century Canadian city. In: BourneLSHuttonTShearmurRet al. (eds) Canadian Urban Regions: Trajectories of Growth and Change. Toronto: Oxford University Press, pp. 125–159.
48.
WhitfordJ (2005) The New Old Economy: Networks, Institutions and the Organizational Transformation of American Manufacturing. New York: Oxford University Press.
