The role of industry in the labour market of small towns

The problem of changing and shrinking economic base of many small towns causes necessity of searching new paths of development for them. Central service functions existing in those towns previously are largely washed out to larger cities as a result of the present metropolisation processes. The opportunity for economic base or redevelopment of small towns should focus on manufacturing industry. The issue of the paper is to indicate the role of industry for the development of labour market in the space of the small towns, proving the positive impact has practical applications because of its ability to design and implement new development strategy objectives of these towns. The study area were Poland’s counties (poviats), in which the central city had less than 20,000 inhabitants