Figure 2: The developement of employment in the Ruhr-conurbation
´76-´98 - sectors of the economy
Business orient.
services
Household orient.
services
State, non-profit org.
Credit banks & insurances
Transport
Trade
Whole economy
Construction
Processing industries
-l,l,. ■
Mining
Source: Bade, University of Dortmund, statistics of employment, own presentation
Source: Bomer, 2000c, 46
The development of the sectors of business orient. services, household orient.
services and also banking & insurance looks quite good in absolute terms, but in
relation to the average standard of the (old) Federal Republic, and especially in
relation to their large agglomerations, the performance of the economy of the Ruhr
area is very weak, as figure 3 demonstrates.
Figure 3 demonstrates that the capacity for generating employment in the production-
orientated services (including r&d) of the region has declined relative to the old
FRG. Bade´s hypothesis (1998) is that in the last 20-30 years there has been a strong
correlation between the number of business-orientated services and the development
of jobs in the processing industries and the other service sectors. This is the so-called
parallel thesis. Because science-based industries are traditionally located in other
regions, for example, in Munich or Düsseldorf, and because it is not possible to
reproduce such an environment in every old industrial area in the space of two or
three decades, this parallel thesis seems to make a good contribution to explaining
the weakness of the Ruhr economy. Although the public part of innovation policy in
the Ruhr area seems to be in some cases a success, the number of innovation-
orientated jobs in private business is not large enough in comparison with other
regions in Germany (see Figure 3). As the whole, therefore, the process of job
creation in the Ruhr has, in comparison with other German metropolitan areas, not
been very successful (Figure 4).
Results: a decline of the basic and other industries, an under-proportional growth of
new industries and services, high employment rates (see Table 1) and a financial
crisis in the local communities and the budget of the federal state of Northrhine
Westfalia.