Labour and control shifts: financial services in US metro areas, 2007–17

Abstract

We use a triangulation approach combining data on mergers and acquisitions and the labour market with 66 interviews to tease out a decade of changes (2007–17) in corporate control and employment in financial services across 47 major US metropolitan areas. Our results show that while corporate control is rapidly shifting and concentrating within a financial-cum-technological axis of first-tier cities, which we coin the Northeastern Corridor–Bay Area axis, with New York and San Francisco in the lead, significant employment growth took place in second- and third-tier cities, such as Jacksonville, Florida, signalling a changing spatial division of labour in US finance.