Local High-Tech Job Multipliers in Europe

Examining employment growth in local labor markets across Europe, this paper finds that each worker in a high-skilled occupation creates up to five extra jobs in less-skilled intensive services in the same region. However, it is also shown that there exist persistent differences in the size of this local high-tech job multiplier across regions. In particular, we find that the multiplier is larger in regions with high immigration, an abundance of less-skilled workers, and lower gross output per capita. At the country level we also show that this results in local high-tech job multipliers that are larger in Southern European countries than in the rest of Europe.