United Kingdom

In terms of the distribution of the labour force in this period, among the most striking changes was the development of white-collar occupations. Between 1881 and 1921, of male workers, those in public administration, professional occupations, and subordinate services, along with those in commercial occupations, increased from some 700,000 to 1,700,000 (out of a total workforce of some 9,000,000 in 1881 and 13,500,000 in 1921). Those in transport and communications almost doubled in number to 1,500,000, while those who worked in the manufacture of metal, machines, implements, and vehicles increased from almost 1,000,000 to over 2,000,000. Those in mining also doubled in number, to 1,200,000 in 1921. These were the real growth areas in the economy. The number of individuals involved in the agricultural sector, on the other hand, declined but exceeded 1,250,000 in 1921 and thus made up a still important component of the occupational structure of the country. All other sectors remained stable or lost workers, with the growth industry of the early 19th century, textiles and clothing, decreasing from about 1,000,000 to 750,000 workers in 1921.

The economy lost a good deal of its old artisan character. Accompanying this erosion of artisan power at the point of production were some tendencies toward increases of scale in factory production. To some degree there also was a decline in the old hierarchies of skill, most notably in the erosion of the position of artisans, the mid-Victorian labour aristocracy. At the same time, the characteristics of the social structure of production in the preceding period were still apparent, namely “combined and uneven” development, whereby old and new forms of industrial organization and production methods were often combined, and overall development was not uniform. The result was that skill and authority were still distributed in a very complex way throughout industry. Older historical accounts concerning the late 19th- and early 20th-century formation of an increasingly de-skilled and uniform labour force have given way to a more nuanced picture, so that the rise of the Labour Party is no longer interpreted, as it earlier was, simply as a consequence of the supposed emergence of this de-skilled labour force. Moreover, in line with more recent scholarship, the emergence of the Labour Party in the late 19th and early 20th century is no longer viewed as a reflex reaction to economic conditions or to the situation of workers; instead, it is understood in terms of the role of political intervention and political language in shaping what was indeed a new sense of class unity and not as a direct expression of the labour force itself, which was in fact still strikingly divided not only by skill but by many other characteristics of workplace experience.

The number of women in professional occupations and subordinate services doubled to 440,000 in 1921, out of a total workforce of some 5,500,000 women. This shift did much to reshape women’s changing understanding of themselves, particularly among the middle classes, where the more public world of work called into question exclusively domestic definitions of femininity. Women’s employment in textile and clothing manufacture was, however, still massive, with the real decline in the production of textiles not coming until after World War I. In 1881 the textile and clothing industry employed nearly 1,500,000 women; though by 1921 this number had shrunk, it remained considerable, at 1,300,000. Within the textile industry, women’s trade unions made some headway, but it is testimony to the power of traditional paternalist understandings of gender relationships among workers that male authority still obtained for the most part in both the home and the workplace, where women were excluded from the better-paid and more-skilled jobs. Domestic service was still the bedrock of women’s employment, comprising some 1,750,000 workers in 1881 out of a total of 3,900,000, though by 1921 this number had grown to 1,800,000 but shrunk in relative importance.

Family and gender