The employment profile of cities around the world: Consumption vs. production cities and economic development

Census data for 7000 cities – three fourth of the world’s urban population – reveal that cities of the same population size in countries with similar development levels differ substantially in terms of their employment composition, especially in the developing world. Using these data, we classify cities into production cities with high employment shares of urban tradables (e.g., manufacturing or business services), consumption cities with high employment shares of urban non-tradables (e.g., retail and personal services), or neutral cities with a balanced mix of urban tradables and non-tradables. After establishing stylized facts regarding the sectoral distribution of employment in our global sample of cities, we discuss the various paths by which developing nations may urbanize through production cities – via industrialization or tradable services – or consumption cities – via resource exports, agricultural exports, or deindustrialization. Country and city-level data corroborate our hypotheses. Results on the construction of very tall buildings also provide suggestive evidence on the relationship between resource exports and consumption cities. Importantly, consumption cities seem to present lower growth opportunities than production cities, diminishing the role of cities as “engines of growth.” Understanding how sectoral structure mediates the urbanization-growth relationship and how consumption cities become production cites is thus highly relevant for policy.