Population Migration and Economic Restructuring in the United States

Abstract

This article demonstrates that sectoral employment shifts associated with the migration pattern changes of the 1970s are very different than those for the period 1955-60 to 1965-70. Changing competitiveness for jobs in manufacturing and other traditional basic sectors of the economy cannot account for the greatly accelerated levels of core-periphery net outflow that have been the dominant characteristic of interstate movement during the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, an interconnected set of activities that includes government, services, trade, and construction is associated with the broadscale shifts in the geographic pattern of the United States' population. The causal linkage from migration to employment change assumed heightened importance during the 1970s.