DEFENSE SPENDING AND INTERREGIONAL LABOR MIGRATION

This paper analyses the geography of the defense-related industrial work force in the United States. We hypothesize that the peculiar locational proclivities of military industrial firms and the willingness of the Pentagon to subsidize relocation has made a significant contribution to the interregional migration of labor, particularly of scientists and engineers, and to the formation of new labor pools far from the old industrial heartland. Using census information on interstate migration between 1975 and 1980, we find that defense-dependent scientists and engineers indeed move farther, though not more often, than their nondefense-dependent counterparts, and that their destinations closely associate with patterns of defense spending. Defense-dependent blue-collar workers, while they move less often than their scientific and engineering coworkers, are also drawn toward defense-dependent locations when they do move. Our findings suggest that workers follow jobs in the defense industry, rather than vice versa, and indicate that a process of defense-related regional labor pool formation, amplified by interstate migration, adds to the volume of interregional labor flows.