I think deindustrialization is not exactly a symptom of productivity growth. It's more of a symptom of loss of labor competitiveness, possibly from a failure i

I think deindustrialization is not exactly a symptom of productivity growth. It's more of a symptom of loss of labor competitiveness, possibly from a failure in productivity growth relative to other industries. Mobility of capital has a lot to do with it. For example, an area with lots of factories that popped up at the same time, and now they're reaching end of life and the capital owner will rebuild them in a different location where labor is more competitive. If you think about the postwar boom, there was massive productivity growth in many regions that saw continuously increasing labor force participation and internal immigration. Detroit comes to mind. In the low-productivity 80s (when productivity growth reached 0 at one point) factories started closing because they were uncompetitive with foreign producers. Northern industrial centers started evaporating as they were replaced by southern ones with similar productivity but lower overall labor cost.