ABSTRACT
Employment has been divided into three components, agriculture (3.1-2), manufacturing including mining (3.3-4) and services (3.5-6). In fact, problems of definition and the format in which census data are published make the divisions, especially between manufacturing and services, less than clear-cut (Lee, 1979). But even at this low level of disaggregation, a number of important elements of structure and change during the Victorian period can be seen. The most obvious feature in this change was the fall in employment in agriculture both in absolute numbers and relative to the other two sectors. In Britain as a whole agriculture accounted for 22 per cent of employment in 1851, a small share by contemporary international comparisons and present-day Third World countries, but was less than 8 per cent by 1911. By the latter date it was only in the geographically peripheral areas of Britain that agriculture comprised a substantial share of regional employment. Manufacturing, by contrast, showed little change either in locational concentration or in share of national employment, increasing its share by some 4 per cent over this period. The pattern of service employment is perhaps less familiar, having been accorded less attention by most textbook writers. The share of this sector increased considerably, by some 10 per cent, during the sixty-year period shown here. Services thus absorbed most of the share of employment relinquished by agriculture.
