High-tech policy, high-tech realities: the spatial distribution of high-tech industry in America 1

This chapter examines the spatial distribution of high-tech industrial development during the 1970s and early 1980s. It begins by providing a broad overview of manufacturing location in the United States since the 1950s and discusses recent literature on high-tech industry location. The chapter shifts focus from what is more generally known about high-tech industrial location tendencies to less known realities of high-tech industry in America&s;s rural areas. Existing high-tech policy is poised to repeat past mistakes that will further contribute to uneven economic development. The chapter suggests that the spatial division of labor evolves as firms seek locations with profitable supplies of appropriate labor. Recognition that the spatial division of labor is an important factor in high-tech industry location is the ingredient most often missing from policy discussions. Ten of the fourteen states with the largest concentrations of total high-tech plants and employment were located in the Northeast, Middle Atlantic and Great Lakes regions.