Abstract

This paper summarises findings from the Occupational Structure of Britain c.1381-1911 project using new datasets on (mostly) male occupational structure 1381-2011. A number of key findings have come out of the project. First, in occupational terms Britain’s transition to an industrialised economy was essentially complete by 1700. Second, the structural shift in employment from agriculture to industry, traditionally associated with the Industrial Revolution, actually took place during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Third, after 1760, a labour-intensive form of industrialisation gave way to a technologically intensive labour substituting path. Fourth, the seventeenth century also saw some growth of the tertiary sector and from 1700 the key structural shift was not from the primary sector to the secondary sector but from the primary sector to the tertiary sector. In the eighteenth century more areas experienced deindustrialisation than industrialisation as the textile industry concentrated on the coal fields. Fifth, these findings suggest a much more rapid growth in productivity in manufacturing industry during the Industrial Revolution than the national accounts literature had previously suggested.