ADJUSTMENT TO GLOBALISATION: A STUDY OF THE FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY IN EUROPE

has increased continuously since 1970. In 1989 the number of footwear jobs in Portugal
was double the number which existed in 1970.⁵

In addition to looking at changes in total employment it is also important, as trade
theory suggests, to consider changes in the relative employment of skilled and unskilled
workers in the footwear sector. Unfortunately, the available data do not clearly define
skilled and unskilled workers and so, in common with other studies of globalisation, we
have to use definitions based upon manual and non-manual workers (Table 2).

Table 2: The Composition of Employment in Footwear: Manual and Non-Manual

Workers (number)

Sources: Eurostat, ILO, ISIS

In all countries except Portugal and Italy, there has been a substantial loss of manual
employment in the footwear industry. This loss of manual employment has occurred
consistently since the 1970s although it has generally been more pronounced in the
period since 1985. It is interesting to note that in all countries, except Portugal,
employment of non-manual workers in footwear also fell in the 1970s and early 1980s
and that for Spain, Italy and the UK the proportionate decline in the number of non-
manual workers was greater than that for manual workers. Thus, according to these data
employment of unskilled workers relative to skilled workers increased in the 1970s.
This is consistent with traditional trade and technology explanations of the impact of
globalisation whereby trade leads to a reduction in the size of the unskilled intensive
sector and, by compressing the relative wage of the unskilled, stimulates an increase in
the relative use of unskilled relative to skilled labour.

⁵ Due to an apparent change in the recording of footwear employment in Portugal after 1989 we cannot
continue the employment series into the 1990s. Recorded employment in 1990 was double that recorded
in 1989 yet output remained at roughly the same level.

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