Belfast’s Gasworks Employment Matching Service

Deindustrialisation: Although Belfast’s industrial base had experienced decline since the 1930s, the indus-trial crisis reached its peak in the late 1970s/early 1980s with all the traditional industrial sectors affected (e.g. shipbuilding, engineering, linen-production). Due to the accelerated process of deindustrialisation, manufacturing employment declined from 67,000 in 1973 to 18,000 in 1995. Although over 8,000 new jobs were created in services during the 1980s, about 15,000 jobs in manufacturing were lost over the same period (Gaffikin/Morrissey, 1999). As a consequence, only 8.7% of the workforce was employed in manufacturing in 2001, down from 23.4% in 1981 (NISRA, online; Gaffikin/Morrissey, 1999).[...]