proceed to look at how the domestic nature of the footwear industry in Europe has
changed over the past 30 years in the light of these developments in trade.
3. Changes in Employment and Wages in the Footwear Sector
3.1 Employment in Footwear
Table 1 below shows the tremendous changes in the use of labour in the footwear sector
that have occurred since 1970. However, it is clear that the pattern of changes in labour
input vary substantially across countries. In the UK, the US and Germany the amount of
persons employed in footwear has been declining continuously since 1970. For these
countries between one tenth and one third of the jobs in footwear in 1970 had been lost
by 1980. Employment loss continued throughout the 1980s and by 1997 the number of
footwear jobs in the US was only 32 per cent of the level in 1970. In Germany in the
same year employment in footwear was less than one fifth of the level of 1970, whilst in
the UK only 43 per cent of the number of jobs at the start of the period remained.4
Table 1: Change in Total Labour Input in Footwear in Selected Countries:1970=100
|
US |
Italy |
Spain |
Portugal |
UK |
Germany | |
|
1970 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
100 |
|
1980 |
78,92 |
97.52 |
121.36 |
108.21 |
91.49 |
62.54 |
|
1985 |
51,96 |
96.18 |
104.40 |
124.02 |
68.81 |
54.07 |
|
1990 |
37,74 |
91.53 |
61.92 |
n.a. |
52.27 |
36.50 |
|
1995 |
29,65 |
101,14 |
53,15 |
n,a, |
42,32 |
20,8 |
|
1997 |
31,85 |
101,78 |
57,16 |
n,a, |
42,98 |
19,56 |
Source:ISIS
For Italy, employment in footwear remained roughly constant throughout the 1970s and
early 1980s. Between 1985 and 1992 there was a 10 per cent reduction in the level of
employment in the Italian footwear sector. However, there has subsequently been an
increase in employment in the footwear sector in Italy and with a return to the numbers
employed in the early 1970s. For Spain the level of employment in the footwear sector
increased during the 1970s and then declined from 1980 to 1988 with some subsequent
stabilisation of employment. Between 1985 and 1988 one third of footwear jobs in
Spain were lost. The period of employment loss in Spain coincides with accession to the
EU and there is some evidence of a period of relocation by Spanish footwear
manufactures to Portugal during this period. Footwear employment in Portugal itself
4 The data for Germany incorporate the eastern part of the country after 1990, hence there was an even
greater decline in employment in the western part of the country in the 1990s than is shown in these data.
11