The Dynamic Resilience of Urban Labour Networks

Abstract: Understanding and potentially predicting or even controlling urban labour markets represents a great challenge for workers and policy makers alike. Cities are effective engines of economic growth and prosperity and incubate complex dynamics within their labour market, and the labour markets they support demonstrate considerable diversity. This presents a challenge to policy makers who would like to optimise labour markets to benefit workers, promote economic growth and manage the impact of technological change. While much previous work has studied the economic characteristics of cities as a function of size and examined the exposure of urban economies to automation, this has often been from a static perspective. In this work we examine the structure of city job networks to uncover the diffusive properties. More specifically, we identify the occupations which are most important in promoting the diffusion of beneficial or deleterious properties. We find that these properties vary considerably with city size.