The Dynamics of Professions at an Interregional Level. A New Labor Division?

Over the last few years much research has stressed deep changes in the reorganization of production processes among different sectors, with a strong impact on the long-term dynamics of the labor market and the development of professional skills due to two main factors: technological innovation and the internationalization of both production platforms and the value chain. These two factors have different effects on the evolution of the labor market and professional competences. Technological innovation requires skilled workers with increasing knowledge content. The internationalization of production platforms, through the international reorganization of jobs, produces different effects at sectoral and territorial level: a stage in the production process located in an area may require skilled labor, another stage of the same production process located in another area may require unskilled labor. The combination of these two factors has important change in employment dynamics and professional contents with a simultaneous effect of increasing skilled and unskilled jobs (polarization effect on the labor market). Moreover, the polarization effect could have a different combination at a territorial level. This paper aims to analyze whether a new form of division of interregional labor is being configured through the redeployment of the professional contents required by businesses. From a methodological point of view, this analysis is carried out for the period 2012-2016 and considers the 3-digit level of classification of professional groups (129 professional classes - ISTAT CP2011). For this period the data are homogeneous and it is possible a comparison with sufficiently detailed professional classification levels. Finally, from a territorial point of view, we consider the usual three main territorial divisions into North, Center and South of Italy.