The current focus on talents, human capital and the creative class continues to exert a major influence on urban policies and strategies. The attraction and retention of talent is regarded as imperative to the development of high-tech sectors which are considered crucial engines of economic growth in the western world. However, the close relationship between talent and high-tech sectors requires empirical testing, especially as it has been widely embraced by academics and policy makers. The current paper provides such an analysis based on employment data within manufacturing industries in Denmark in the period 1993-2006.

The paper shows that a general upskilling of the workforce has taken place. Interestingly, this upskilling is not limited to R&D intensive industries; in fact the upskilling is relatively higher in low-tech industries. The upskilling, however, reveals considerable geographical differences especially between rural and urban regions. There is a clear tendency for the employees in manufacturing in the metropolitan area of Copenhagen to be better educated than in the peripheral regions in the southern and western parts of Denmark. This difference is intensified throughout the period examined. Further, the geographical imbalance is not just a case of the high-tech industries being located in and around Copenhagen, as the low and medium low-tech sectors in the Copenhagen area also show a higher growth in the share of highly educated employees than in the rest of the country.

We do not claim that the findings of the paper call the importance of talent for high-tech sectors into question. However, we do argue that, firstly, talent appears to be equally important for economic development in less research intensive industries and, secondly, that the urban/rural divide plays the primary role in explaining the geography of talent rather than the localisation of high-tech industries.