2019 Volume 65 Issue 4 Pages 295-311
This paper considers the characteristics of spatial changes in industrial employment on a nationwide scale in Japan since the 1990s. It also investigates the labor force acquisition strategy utilized by manufacturing firms in the peripheral areas of Japan.
First, the spacial structure of the manufacturing industry in the early 1990s was identified as a four zone structure centered on the three major metropolitan areas of Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Later, with a general decrease in manufacturing employment, the spatial structure was reorganized into five zones. Among these five zones, industrial employment was relatively concentrated in the second zone consisting of the Tokai, North-Kanto, Koshin, and Hokuriku areas. This occurred due to the growth of transportation equipment as well as production equipment. Contrastingly, industrial employment has drastically decreased in both the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas. In the peripheral areas, manufacturing employment has also declined, especially in labor-intensive industries such as electrical machinery and textiles. Regional trends in industrial employment during the economic recovery period since 2013 were not significantly different from long-term trends since the 1990s.
Second, the labor force acquisition strategy utilized by manufacturing firms in the peripheral areas of Japan was described. According to a case study of machinery in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) located in rural areas in Kumamoto Prefecture, those companies have spatially expanded the labor market area and established offices outside the area to acquire human resources. The companies also used external economies in regional central cities to recruit human resources and obtain knowledge and technology for innovation. Those SMEs strengthened their innovation activities through recruitment of innovative workers despite the difficulty in acquiring human resources from the local labor market. This is noteworthy from the viewpoint of maintaining industrial employment in peripheral areas. It is necessary to generalize based on examples from other regions.
