<p>Given the growing importance of measuring both the degree and sources of resilience following major shocks, the concept of resilience has attracted increasing scholarly attention. However, no universally accepted measurement exists, and prevailing approaches offer limited insight into industrial impacts. This study provides a structural sensitivity index to measure the industrial sources of regional employment resilience and applies it to the Japanese economy between 1980 and 2012. We present a novel formula that quantifies the sources of regional resilience through within-sector and structural change effects and reveals how unevenly different local industries contribute to regional resilience. A chronological and geographical exploration of employment resilience shows that Japanese prefectures gradually became more resilient after the 1990s, accompanied by rising regional heterogeneity. Furthermore, the structural change effect consistently undermines regional resilience, whereas regional resilience benefits from favourable within-sector effects. Finally, the increase in regional heterogeneity behind improvements in resilience is accompanied by industrial unevenness from different time horizons. However, the relationship between industrial unevenness and resilience is not spatially uniform, suggesting that regional context plays a critical role in shaping resilience outcomes.</p>