Efficient matching of local demand and supply of labour at different qualifica-tion levels is considered to be an important prerequisite both for economic growth and social cohesion in any region. Hence, more or less explicitly, re-gional development programmes are designed to improve the performance of functional local labour markets. This is e.g. based on analyses of structural change towards the knowledge society and the mobility of human capital. The levels of education as well as the returns to education vary across different cities and regions. Attractive urban regions are expected to improve its human capital even more through geographical mobility of high-qualified labour. Infrastruc-ture, like location of higher education institutions, business services and trans-port systems as well as the institutional frameworks are also expected to be of immense importance for urban and regional growth.
The use of annual gross-flow labour market statistics is very relevant in these analyses. Such data may allow multidimensional analysis of labour market mo-bility, i.e. in geographical terms as well as between sectors and according to the qualifications of the labour force. Theoretical considerations may be taken from e.g. the human capital theory and theories of segmented labour markets and regional division of labour, but also from more modern theories that aim to ex-plain structural change and new forms of transitions in regional labour markets.
The labour market mobility is partly considered to be associated with differences in supply and demand of labour both at the local and regional level, differences that create various forms of unemployment and vacancy formations. We expect people to move from low paid to better paid jobs, from unemployment to jobs, from decreasing and stagnated sectors to growing sectors, and thus from stag-nated and backwards cities and regions to more prosperous, expanding and dy-namic cities and regions with a surplus of jobs. According to human capital the-ory, it is the most highly educated persons who are considered to benefit most from mobility due to an expectation of higher returns to education among the highly educated. Inter-sector mobility is also expected to be more frequent among younger people, who do not yet have any sector-specific knowledge through a long professional career.
The main purpose of the project is thus to analyse the mobility performance and competitiveness of cities and regions in terms of growth of employment and especially focusing on the number and quality of the persons that enter and leave the local labour markets. As a starting point cities and regions are first classified into different categories according to a set of production conditions and secondly into more familiar regional typologies. It is perhaps not very sur-prising that cities and regions with unequal production conditions perform dif-ferently according to employment growth and recruitment, but when similar regions to some extent also perform differently, this calls for more sophisticated explanations.
Statistics Norway has, in co-operation with researchers from other Nordic coun-tries, analysed labour market mobility among persons with different qualifica-tion levels. In particular, we have established methods for analysing vacancy formations within and between regional labour markets based on the whole working age population. We have also established indexes that illuminate the gross (and thus also net) demand for labour in regional labour markets and sectors and differences between business cycles, as well as analyses of regional performance of recruitment to jobs within and between local labour markets (see e.g. Edvardsson et al., 2000, 2002, Heikkilä et al.,1999a,b, Heikkilä and Stambøl,1999, Johansson et al.,1997, Persson ed. 2001, Stambøl, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003a,b and Stambøl et al. 1996, 1997, 1999, 2003).
By use of gross-flow data and specified mobility concepts the project aims to produce sets of regional, segments and sector-specific mobility performance indexes illustrating how each city and region perform with regard to recruitment of different kinds of labour in a) within the local labour market and b) through in-migration. An important aspect of different vacancy formation is found in different levels and structures of deactivation, thus including analyses illustrat-ing part of the vacancy chain processes.
1) As an introductory analysis different categories of urban and regional labour markets are defined on the basis of similar and dissimilar production condi-tions (See table 3.1 and 3.2 in section 3) and through a somewhat more tra-ditional and manual way of classification into regional typologies (See table 3.3 in section 3).
2) Gross mobility between different status groups and regions and abroad is calculated by use of a consistent regional annual vacancy account (See table 3.4 in section 3).
3) Different gross-streams by gender, age, education and sectors within and between the urban and regional labour markets are measured by different mobility concepts.
4) Specific and total performance indexes showing the urban and regional competitiveness by mobility are calculated (See table 3.7 in section 3).
5) Finally we also investigate if the growth of employment is positively corre-lated to the level of gross labour-mobility. In the same manner we also vestigate the relationship between the growth of annual personal in-come/the level of annual personal income and the different types of gross mobility to and from jobs.
Another challenge is to explain any different performances in similar cities and regions, e.g. testing if the criteria that are chosen as production conditions (see paragraph 1 above) give significant differences. The analyses use individual register based gross-flow labour market data for total populations in working age 16-74 years by year-to-year transitions through the time period 1994-1999.
More specifically we examine certain fields of the economy in addition to a more general overview representing mobility in all sectors in the urban and regional labour markets. Firstly, we carry out a more detailed analysis of parts of the so-called "new economy", here represented by knowledge intensive business ser-vices (KIBS). Secondly, we examine labour mobility among different national groups classified by Norwegian citizens, other Nordic citizens, other Western citizens and finally the remaining part of the labour force aggregated and recog-nized as non-Western citizens. Finally, we examine some qualitative aspects of labour market mobility streams, measured by use of average level of education, and changes and levels of annual income seen in light of different labour mobil-ity.
The sections are distributed as follows: The second section includes a short over-view of some theories and hypotheses that illustrate and define more general aspects of the regional labour mobility and some more specific aspects of labour mobility connected to the so-called "new economy". The third section describes the urban and regional classifications made operative for this analysis as well as a description of data and definitions of mobility concepts made operative for the methods being used. The fourth section includes all empirical results, starting with some general mobility analysis for the nation as a whole and the main ur-ban labour markets followed by more specific analyses testing labour mobility performances within and across similar and dissimilar categories of local labour markets. Specific sections show results connected to labour market mobility in parts of the so-called "new economy", here represented by knowledge intensive business services (KIBS), and deviation in labour mobility across different na-tional groups. Section four culminates with qualitative results which illustrate the "brain-gain"/"brain-drain" competition across typologies of regions and dif-ferent sectors of the economy and concludes with a descriptive analysis of in-come change and education change within and between urban and regional labour markets. Section five summarizes the main findings of the analysis.