Decomposition of changes in structure and trends in employment in Czechia at NUTS 2 level

Abstract Observing the structure of employment and its trends constitute the fundamental baseline to assess the successes and failures of both national and EU social and economic policies in terms of evaluating effectiveness of support to regions framed by both competitiveness and cohesion issues. The study presents the assessment of structural changes of employment in the system of traditional three economic sectors using the measure of structures dissimilarity along with its decomposition and trends. The Czech NUTS 2 level regions were used for the study and the analysed period covered the years 2008−2014. The U measure of changes in structure of components was applied on data on employment (NACE classification). The results confirmed the current trends of (i) tertiarization in old industrial regions; (ii) the increasing share of employment in the industrial sector shown by some rural regions, and (iii) the growing fragmentation of the spatial pattern of socio-economic development.