WAGE RATES,OCCUPATION STAFFING PATTERNS,AND THE LOCATION OF THE COMPUTER AND SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRIES: SOME TESTS OF A CITY-SIZE,INDUSTRIAL LOCATION SORTING MODEL

This research first develops a paradigm relating technology adoption, plant function, and location in different areas. It then examines empirically some of the paradigm's postulates dealing with occupation staffing patterns and wage rates in headquarters and production plants in different size cities and regions of the country using survey data. The research found that plants in large cities, headquarters plants, and plants in innovative regions paid higher wages than plants in small cities, production plants, and those in innovation-lagging regions. Headquarters plants and plants in large cities and innovative regions had a significantly larger number of scientists, engineers, and technicians on their staffs but few production workers. Production plants and those in small cities and towns and lagging regions had few professional workers but a significant number of production workers. For all types of plants an inverse relationship existed between plant size and city size. The postulated direct relationship between plant size and wage rates was not clearly evident in the survey data except for low skilled occupations. Neither was the relationship clearly evident in the U.S. Census data for the computer and semiconductor industries, as it was for total U.S. manufacturing.