Employment in Central Lancashire

Introduction

Central Lancashire is defined to include the four County Districts of Chorley, Preston, South Ribble and West Lancashire. The first three districts share a high degree of economic cohesion with strong residence and workplace trip linkages. West Lancashire, and particularly the major town of Skelmersdale, shares many of the general structural characteristics of the Central Lancashire sub-region but is slightly set apart because of strong economic linkages both with Merseyside and Greater Manchester as well as with other employment centres in Central Lancashire itself.

The Central Lancashire area recorded a resident mid-year population 2002 estimated at 444,300 or 31% of the Lancashire sub-region total. It has a strong and diverse economic base that for many years has been a powerhouse for jobs growth in the county. Benefiting from its location astride the main north/south transport routes, the sub-region today has a broad structure of industry that is not too dissimilar from the national pattern.

Long-term Employment Patterns

Central Lancashire's traditional strengths lay very much in the production industries with the earliest employment records for 1929 showing 65% of the insured workforce being engaged in manufacturing and just a fifth in services. However, the area was never quite as dependent on textiles as many other parts of the county and assisted by new activities established to aid the war effort, throughout post-war years managed a successful diversification into many new industries, including aerospace, motor vehicles and electrical and mechanical equipment as well as some of the non-engineering sectors. At the same time, service industries expanded steadily providing many further new job opportunities.

Alongside its production industry dominated base, traditionally the sub-region had a high degree of dependency on large plant enterprises. Individually these often employed many thousands of people and included such companies as the Leyland Motor Corporation, the British Aircraft Corporation, Royal Ordnance, Baxi Heating, General Electric, Courtaulds and many others. Post-1970, but particularly post-1980, as major restructuring and downsizing programmes were implemented, this proved a major handicap with the area receiving successive shocks from large scale closures and redundancies. Since 1970 some 45,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared (or have been reclassified) in Central Lancashire reducing the sector's share of total jobs from 45% to only 13% in 2002. However, over the same period service industries created more than 89,000 new jobs, increasing its share of total employment from 45% to 78%.

Recent Employment Trends

Buoyant local growth in employment across a wide range of sectors over the mid- to late 1980s gave way to a severe downturn in the first half of the 1990s as the impact of the so-called "Peace Dividend" began to bite and as some of the sub-region's largest industrial employers highly dependent on defence work were forced into major restructuring and downsizing programmes in a bid to improve competitiveness. The energy and water supply sectors, now comprising privatised utilities, also under-went a bout of major rationalisation. This was a highly traumatic period involving many thousands of industrial job losses. In spite of the severe impact on many individuals, the area itself, however, appears to have quickly adapted to many of these losses undergoing a rapid recovery phased fuelled by new job opportunities in services.

Over the latest five-year period 1998-2002 Central Lancashire's employee workforce has grown to a total of over 209,000, an all-time high (Table 1). The net increase of 22,600 or 12.1% was well in excess of that achieved both nationally and in the North West Region. Many sectors contributed to this encouraging out-turn but most notable were continuing gains in Business Activities, a marked acceleration in Construction and expansion in Education.

Within the sub-region jobs growth was strongest in Chorley and South Ribble (Table 2). In spite of a pause in employment growth in Preston over the early part of the period due in some measure to local government reorganisation, job creation here has also recently accelerated and the City remains by far the largest single work centre in the County. It has moved a long way from its industrial roots and today nearly 84% of its employees are engaged in services. This reflects the importance of the town as an office, administrative and commercial centre for Lancashire, attracting daily commuters from all parts of the County and beyond.

Industrial Structure Characteristics

Manufacturing industry, which for many years has taken the brunt of job losses in the sub-region recorded a further decline over the 1998-2002 period. An additional 6,600 jobs (-19.2%) were lost over the period resulting in total employment in the sector falling to a low of 27,500. The industry as a whole now accounts for only 13.1% of employee jobs in Central Lancashire (against 27% as recently as 1989). This share is now fractionally below the national average of 13.4%, and locally ranges from just 8.5% in Preston to 20.6% in South Ribble.

Within the manufacturing sector the engineering group of industries (SIC classifications 27 -35) continues to have a strong presence, accounting for about 42% of all manufacturing jobs in the sub-region. Though to a far lesser extent than hitherto, these industries are still heavily influenced by a few large establishments of national and multi-national companies. They include Motor Vehicles (3,000 jobs) - for instance, Leyland Trucks and Albion Automotive; Machinery & Equipment (2,800 jobs) - e.g. Goss Graphic Systems, Royal Ordnance; Fabricated Metal Products (2,700 jobs) - e.g. Baxi Heating, Bosal UK; and Electrical & Optical Equipment (2,500 jobs) - e.g. Alstom Traction and Marconi Communications. Other than engineering, the largest manufacturing sectors in the area are Food & Beverages and Paper, Printing & Publishing.

Amongst other primary and production industries agricultural employment remains important particularly in West Lancashire District, though job numbers continue to fall steadily year-on-year. In contrast, there has been a huge surge in jobs associated with the construction industry with total employment increasing by 6,000 or by more than two-thirds between 1998-2002 to reach 14,700. New public investment in education and health capital projects together with buoyant housing and commercial markets have all contributed to this major up-turn. The two major employers in this sector are the AMEC Group in Adlington, and Enterprise plc, based in Leyland.

It is the service sector, which now provides the great proportion of local employee jobs opportunities, in 2002 accounting for over 78% of all jobs in the sub-region. The momentum of services growth continued apace between 1998-2002 with an additional 24,000 jobs (+17.5%) recorded over the period.

Over much of the 1990s consumer and business activities were key drivers of employment growth in Central Lancashire. Retail distribution was particularly buoyant, adding many thousands of new jobs. Business services too, including such activities as real estate, leasing, computer services, law, accountancy and labour recruitment also expanded at an unprecedented rate. Over the more recent period Business Activities have continued to expand apace with job numbers rising by over 9,000 (+47%), 1988-2002, but retail net jobs growth has virtually halted. The new drivers have reflected central government's large public expenditure programme. As well as its impact on the construction industry (see above) this has helped boost activity in key public service areas including education, health and public administration and defence (including judicial activities and public security, law and order). These three core "public service" areas (which include many services provided by the private sector) increased their employee job head count by nearly 9,000 or 18% between 1998-2002.

Whilst the overall expansion of such service sector employment directly reflected public expenditure and the secular growth of consumer and commercial services generally, it also mirrored to some extent job losses and structural changes experienced in manufacturing as part of the latter's tendency to hive-off and buy-in non-core service activities. The full impact of this "jobs transfer" is impossible to measure but appears to have been particularly strong in the computer and related activities sector, in legal accountancy and consultancy activities as well as in more routine services such as industrial cleaning, security and labour recruitment.

Many of the technical business services are of high calibre and often of a high tech or creative nature and where previously they were in-house and often served the needs of just the single company, are now marketed much more widely often on a national or even international basis. This movement towards the out-sourcing of specialised support services complements the increasing desire of many companies to employ staff on a more flexible basis.

Viewed in slightly greater detail, there were a number of individual service sectors that made an outstanding contribution to local jobs growth 1998-2002. Ranked in order of net new jobs created, these included the following: