Factors Influencing Employment Shifts Across Economic Sectors Explained

in today's video i'm going to be looking at the reasons for changes in the number of people employed in different economic

sectors this is for the igcse geography specification and i've highlighted in the economic

active and energy section where that is relevant so

one of the most important things to understand is that the number of people employed in an economic sector can

change over time here i've shown a reduction in the amount of people working in a primary industry this can

be due to location factors that change which we looked at in the last video but also can be due to a whole whole host of

other factors which i'm going to discuss in this video first thing we'll look at is a change in

raw materials so in the uk in the industrial revolution we saw heavy industry

grow up around the big coal fields and iron ore deposits that

were found naturally in the uk so places like south wales birmingham manchester liverpool sheffield newcastle upon tyne

and the northeast all were very close to those um deposits and therefore became big manufacturing centres

what was needed was a lot of labor in the primary sector in things like mining to extract the resources which were then

sent into the manufacturing sector to be processed into goods what happens over time though is those

raw materials get depleted and when they run out will become very expensive to extract then less people are needed in

those sectors so we see a decline in the amount of people that are working in mining and as a knock-on effect we see

less people working in manufacturing because there are less available raw materials at a cheap price

so this is where an example where raw materials can change and therefore that changes the amount of people working in

a sector like the primary sector we also see changes in terms of location of manufacturing due to technological

changes so here we've got a massive gas pipeline being installed in the uk and we've also

seen the kind of advance and kind of electricity grids which means that i don't have to be right next to the

resources to be able to set up a industry anymore i can be anywhere in the uk

and that means i have lots more freedom and to put my industry wherever wherever the location factors are more suitable

which therefore changes the amount of people that are employed in those sectors in different parts of

the country so we see a kind of regional changes potentially happening over time another also factor is the fact is we

can also now ship resources from other countries so even less people are needed in primary in places like the uk because

we can just get the resources from the board the langled pipeline is a pipeline from

norway to uk that transports gas which means we just get it from norway without having to extract it ourself

i'm now going to look at globalization so globalization is something that's happened since that industrial

revolution period where the economies of the world are becoming increasingly interconnected

this means that there are maybe some other places in the world where it's cheaper to manufacture

the goods that we would traditionally have made here could have labor costs to cheaper lots of raw materials

transport improvements places like brazil south korea china mexico all examples of those places therefore all

the goods that we used to make in places like germany and western europe and the uk

those those manufacturing jobs have moved from developed countries to emerging countries we call this the

global shift in manufacturing so this is an example where a process like globalization has shifted the number of

people employed in a sector in developing developed countries but also it's changed the numbers of people

working in emerging countries where there's been a big growth globalization also allows countries to

focus on their economic strength so they can specialize so here on the left jamaica focuses very much on tourism

because it's got beautiful beaches and a wonderful climate south korea one of the things it focuses on

is on car manufacturing because it's got lots of good raw materials and a very good semi-skilled workforce so

therefore globalization is one of those things that has therefore impacted the number of people employed in each sector

in those kind of places now i'm going to talk about new technology one of the most significant

things that's changed in the last 100 years is that there's been rapid advances in transport technology and

therefore this alters where economic activity is located so if i was going to uk to

australia in the 1800s it would have taken me months by some sort of sail or steamboat

now because technology's improved and we have airplanes i can travel to australia in less than 24 hours

so this technology has meant that the world is much better connected and seems much closer it's what we call a global

village even though the distances haven't actually changed it seems much closer

on the back of this it's not just being transport technology but telecommunications has improved we have

satellites mobiles the internet that means i can send data and information rapidly to the other side of the world

in in seconds this is really important because it basically means that those kind of

technology improvements mean that i can relocate certain economic activity to other bits of the globe maybe where the

location factor is more favorable and this therefore impacts employment levels in sectors in those places so you

might have places where employment levels go up and where in one sector in another part of the world that means

they go down technology also can affect specific sectors

so agriculture can be very affected by new technology here's an example of mechanization this

is where things like tractors and combine harvesters replace that kind of manual work as we saw in that last

picture and all of those manual workers are therefore released from agriculture and can move into other sectors

and for example the secondary sector or the tertiary sector this doesn't just happen in agriculture

we also have containerization this is the idea that we are now shipping goods in these big containers we put them on

trucks or trains transport them around in a country and then we use a crane to put them onto a big container ship so we

can export them internationally this will obviously is a technological advancement

all these containers are the same shape so it can be easily transported and that means that will

impact employment in things like shipping this is traditionally how it had been done

so now i've got these big container ships and i've got big cranes to move them across i don't need as many dog

workers these are what we call stevedores who would have to have shifted the

products by either hand or by car and so therefore i'm seeing a reduction in in this sector

and shipping and moving the actual goods onto it onto a ship uh because of technological advancements

technological advancements can also lead to new opportunities for employment so i talked about the growth of computers

and the internet and as they've come in in the last 30 40 years they have a whole new range

of services which provide jobs um and i've given some examples here broadbrand providers its technicians

software engineers online services for shopping especially these are all things that have come off the back of

new technology being put in place so they've created new jobs and therefore more people move into that sector all of

these being service based jobs the last kind of two areas to discuss is demographic change so we see that the

structure of the population the age of population can change and this can create new

opportunities in terms of employment so in the uk we have an aging population but also we all have more women working

in economic activity than we did 50 years ago one example of how this has changed

because we've got an aging population we need more services to support the elderly so an example would be care

homes and there's a whole range of care homes up and down the country that support the elderly but also

you get specialist services so here's an example of saga holidays they are a booking company for elderly people to go

on holidays specifically for them and therefore that is a service that has only come about because there's been

more and more older people who want to go on holiday we also would say the fact that more uk

families than ever both parents work and because of that they need to have more child care services nannies nurseries

crashes so that has only come about as a social change as more women have been joining the

workforce and more both parents are working um in full-time employment

the last thing is to talk about government so governments also have a key role in and how many people are

employed in each sector they can implement policies but more importantly they can invest money into areas which

they think are important for growth and when they invest into a certain sector that can provide new jobs a good example

in the uk is the fact that they're investing in carbon capture technology this is in the quaternary sector it

needs a lot of research and development to actually work they're doing this to try and reduce carbon emissions

also another sector which is a lot of research and development is agritech so technology for agriculture so because

the government is investing a lot of money in this in the quaternary sector we're going to

see increased employment but that's only because the government has made a specific goal to do that in the uk