Competitive Deficiencies Accelerate Industrial Job Drainage in Vienna

Vienna is losing out as a venue of physical goods production. Between 1971 and 1994, the secondary sector (including SMEs, energy utilities and the construction industry) was bled of some 114,000 jobs, or 37 percent of the base year. Industrial employment in the more narrow sense of the term was cut by more than half over the same period. According to recent data, the 80,600 jobs provided by the industries in Vienna make up just 10 percent of the overall job pool. Current developments show no reversal of the trend: in 1996, Vienna lost substantially more jobs in physical goods production than the rest of Austria taken together (–4.4 percent vs. –2.7 percent). This year, Vienna is again unable to enjoy the fruits of industrial recovery (–4.6 percent vs. –1.2 percent for the first two quarters). The article studies the roots of the de-industrialization process.