Leigh Shaw-Taylor
The secondary sector, as discussed in a previous blog, consists of anyone who makes a physical product. It includes manufacturing, construction, and utilities. Manufacturing includes village artisans like carpenters or blacksmiths, and weavers working at home, as well as any industrial workers employed in factories.
What proportion of the male labour force would you think worked in the secondary sector at the beginning of the 18th century? 10 percent? 20 percent? 30 percent? The Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379-1911 project has established that as early as 1701 the figure was already remarkably high, at 43 percent.

Carl Larsson, In the Carpenter Shop (1905).
Figure 1 (below) shows the long run male occupational structure of England and Wales from 1381-2011. The sources and methods used to construct these estimates were discussed in an earlier blog. The blue line shows the share of the male labour force in the secondary sector over this period. In 1381, our first estimate is that just under 17 percent of the male labour force was employed in the secondary sector. By 1601 our estimate is 30 percent, so considerable industrialisation took place between 1381 and 1601. We suspect, but cannot yet prove, that a disproportionate share of this growth took place in the second half of the 16th century.
The 17th century emerges from the data as the key period of industrialisation, with the secondary sector male labour force share rising from 30 percent to 43 percent between 1601 and 1701.

Figure 1. The male occupational structure of England and Wales 1381-2011.
Industrialisation before the Industrial Revolution?
Over one hundred years of scholarship has assumed that the key period for the structural shift of the labour force from agriculture to the secondary sector was during the Industrial Revolution (between 1750 and 1850). The new data reveal that this shift was in fact already over by 1700. Remarkably, the share of the labour force in the secondary sector was virtually flat from around 1700 all the way through to 1900 and beyond. The key period for industrialisation was therefore probably from 1550 to 1700.
The period from 1550 to 1700 can be characterised as a process of labour-intensive industrialisation. In this period, labour productivity in agriculture was rising. In other words, over time, each worker in agriculture was producing more food. Thus, the share of agricultural employment was able to fall, making the rise in the secondary sector share possible. The growth of the secondary sector at this time consisted of more and more men working in hand-powered, low–tech, and low–productivity industry and construction.

John Saint-Helier Lander, The Blacksmith (Interior of a Workshop with Figures). Jersey Heritage.
Before 1750, an increase in the share of economic output in the secondary sector required an ever-higher proportion of men to work in manufacturing. From the late 18th century there was a change of gear, as more and more men came to work in ‘high-tech’ mechanised factories characterised by rapidly rising labour productivity. As work in factories (first water powered and then steam powered) grew to prominence, an increasing share of the male labour force in manufacturing was not necessary to increase the share of national output in manufacturing.
So, we can see the period after 1750 as a technologically intensive process of industrialisation, in contrast to the labour–intensive process before 1700. Thus the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, can be thought of as a period of technologically intensive industrialisation, preceded by two hundred years of labour–intensive industrialisation.
The share of the labour force in the secondary sector dipped sharply between the World Wars in the great depression. After World War Two, the labour force share in the secondary sector attained new heights. The period since 1971 has been characterised by a sustained process of de-industrialization.
What were the major industries driving change over time?

Table 1. The male occupational structure of England and Wales 1601-1851.
Table 1 breaks the secondary sector down into its most important sub-sectors. The number of tailors (men making clothes) rose slightly over the course of the 17th century, suggesting rising standards of clothing. However, the share then fell over the 18th century. This is misleading, and results from women taking over much of the trade in making clothes for women. It is likely that for both sexes combined, the share of the labour force making clothes actually rose during the 18th century.
Shoemakers rose from just under two percent of the male labour force in 1600 to just under four percent in the late 18th century. It is reasonable to surmise that in the Georgian era people were better shod than their Tudor and Stuart ancestors. Textiles, referring to the manufacture of cloth, was much the largest manufacturing sector, with just over eight percent of adult males employed in the industry at the beginning of the 17th century, rising to 11 percent at the beginning of the 18th century, before declining over the 18th and 19th centuries. This is suggestive of rising productivity over the 18th and 19th centuries.

Albrecht Anker, The village tailor (1894).
The share of adult males making and working metals rose considerably over the early modern period, rising from 2.9 percent around 1600 to 4.5 percent by the middle of the 18th century. The increase continued through the Industrial Revolution period, reaching just over six percent by the middle of the 19th century. Over time it is likely that the range and quality of metal tools for use in both agriculture and industry improved considerably.
The share of men working in the building trades (carpenters, masons, thatchers, slaters and so on) doubled from around four per cent at the beginning of the 17th century to around eight percent in the middle of the 18th century. This suggests substantial improvements in housing standards between the Tudor and Stuart period and the Georgian era. Increases in the share of the male labour force in construction continued during the Industrial Revolution.
Finally, the rest of the secondary sector doubled in size between 1600 and 1850, suggesting a diversification of the sector over time.
Work on France by Alexis Litvine has revealed sharp differences between France and England by the beginning of the 18th century. Whereas in England, 43 percent of the male labour force worked in the secondary sector, the figure for France was a mere 16 percent. In France only 1.6 percent of males worked in shoemaking, compared with 3.1 percent in England and Wales. We know, from late 18th century accounts by English travellers in France, that many people in France, in sharp contrast to England, could not afford shoes at all. In France textiles accounted for a mere 1.8 percent of male workers compared with 11.3 percent in England and Wales. England and Wales, but not France, was ripe for an Industrial Revolution.

Eugene de Blaas, Women gossiping in a tailor’s shop.
Regional changes
Turning back to England and Wales, what was happening at the regional level? Figure 2 (below) shows the decadal increases in the share of the male labour force in the secondary sector at the county level across the 17th century. In Norfolk, to take one example, the total change across the 17th century was from 40 percent to 60 percent. So, the increase over the century was 20 percent, and the increase per decade was around 2 percent. By 1700 Norfolk was the most industrialised part of England and Wales.
A glance at the map shows that almost all parts of the country were industrialising across the 17th century, though some counties were industrialising faster than others.

Figure 2. Decadal increases in county level male labour force shares in manufacturing 1601-1701.
Figure 3 (below) shows the same thing for the period 1701-1761. The pattern is very different from the 17th century. While some parts of the country continued to industrialise over this period, large parts of the country, particularly in the south and east, were actually de-industrialising. This was largely due to the decline of textile industries, as the textile industries came to concentrate on the coal fields in Lancashire, Cheshire and the West Riding of Yorkshire.

Figure 3. Decadal increases in county level male labour force shares in manufacturing 1701-1761.
Figure 4 shows the same thing for the period 1761-1817. In this period even more of the country was deindustrialising, with industrialisation increasingly confined to the Midlands and the North West. So during the 18th century, while the national pattern was stable employment shares in industry, different parts of the country diverged, as industry came to concentrate increasingly on the coal fields in the West Midlands and North West.

Figure 4. Decadal increases in county level male labour force shares in manufacturing 1761-1817.
In summary, the rise in the labour force share in the secondary sector, so long assumed to have taken place during the Industrial Revolution (1750-1850), was in fact completed by the beginning of the 18th century when the figure stood at 43 percent. This was three times the level in France. As the 18th century proceeded, some parts of the country continued to industrialise, but many areas in fact de-industrialised.
Further reading
- Shaw-Taylor, L. and Wrigley, E. A., ‘Occupational Structure and Population Change’, in R. Floud, J. Humphries, and P. Johnson, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, Volume 1: Industrialisation, 1700–1870 (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 53–88. Link to chapter
- Keibek, S., The male occupational structure of England and Wales, 1600-1850, Cambridge University Ph.D. thesis (2017). https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.8960
- Shaw-Taylor, L., and Saito, O., ‘The Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379–1911 and the International Comparative History of Occupational Structure: An overview of findings and where to find them.’ Available here.
- Sugden, K., Keibek, S., Wells, J., and Shaw-Taylor, L., ‘Adam Smith revisited: the relationship between the English woollen manufacture and the availability of coal before the use of steam power’. Continuity and Change, 38 (2023), 163-191.
Tags: industrial revolution, occupational structure, occupations