The shift‐share analysis (SSA) of regional employment growth disparities aims at disentangling the effects of regional differences in industry mix and industrial competitiveness. Yet, the spatial concentration of industry is a blindspot of this approach. We generalize the SSA to encompass this salient feature of the economic geography. Besides, industry emergence and catastrophic growth events—booming or collapsing industries—are integrated in our framework. This novel method is applied to study regional disparities in manufacturing employment growth in France in a dynamic way over a 22‐year period at a fine geographical level.