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Structural Transformation and the Demand for New Labor in Advanced Economies: Interwar Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Carol E. Heim
Carol E. Heim
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003
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Abstract

In prosperous and depressed areas sectors of industry representing structural transformation in interwar Britain tended to draw upon new types of workers rather than upon workers displaced in declining export industries. Data on the age and sex composition of people in expanding and declining industries, on new entrants to the labor force, and on interindustry mobility are examined to support this claim. The process reflects a general tendency of capitalist economies to grow through incorporation of new elements.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-Third Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 585 - 595
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1984

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References

1 For discussion of problems in the use of this data, see Buxton, N. K. and MacKay, D. I., British Employment Statistics: A Guide to Sources and Methods (Oxford, 1977);Google Scholar and Garside, W. R., The Measurement of Unemployment: Methods and Sources in Great Britain, 1850–1979 (Oxford, 1980). With very few exceptions, industries with an increase in insured persons during 1923–1937 also showed an increase in total employment in the industry.Google Scholar

2 Great Britain, Royal Commission on the Geographical Distribution of the Industrial Population, Minutes of Evidence (London, 1937–1939), pp. 501, 504.Google Scholar

3 Public Record Office [henceforth, P.R.O.] T187/2, Special, etc. Areas Loans Advisory Committee [henceforth, S.A.L.A.C.], Notes for Meeting on 8 June 1939.Google Scholar

4 Whiting, R. C., “Oxford between the Wars: Labour and the Motor Industry,” in The Oxford Region, ed. Rowley, T. (Oxford, 1980), p. 156.Google Scholar For a similar argument on the importance of workers drawn from neighboring districts see House, Bamett, A Survey of the Social Services in the Oxford District, vol. 1, Economics and Government of a Changing Area (London, 1938), p. 62.Google Scholar

5 Carr, Frank, “Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry, 1914–1939” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 1978), p. 441.Google Scholar

6 Ministry of Labour Gazette, Nov. 1937, p. 423, and monthly figures on new entrants, Feb. 1931–Sept. 1939 issues. Figures for 1939 are for January through August only.Google Scholar

7 Makower, H., Marschak, J., and Robinson, H. W., “Studies in Mobility of Labour: Analysis for Great Britain, Part II,” Oxford Economic Papers, o.s., no. 4 (1940), pp. 56–57.Google Scholar

8 Britain, Great, Board of Trade, An Industrial Survey of the Lancashire Area (Excluding Merseyside) (London, 1932), appendix 10, “The Southern Drift of Population,” pp. 374–75.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 376.

10 Great Britain, Ministry of Labour, Report on an Investigation into the Employment and Insurance History of a Sample of Persons Insured Against Unemployment in Great Britain (London, 1927), pp. 14–19 and Tables 8–11;Google ScholarMinistry of Labour Gazette, Nov. issues, 1927–1937;Google Scholar and Makower et al., “Studies in Mobility,” p. 50.Google Scholar

11 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (Commons), 5th ser., vol. 342, 29 Nov. 1938, col. 250;Google Scholaribid., vol. 343, 16 Feb. 1939, cols. 1873–74; ibid., vol. 346, 27 April 1939, cols. 1319–20; Trades Union Congress Archives, London, T525/540.91, “Trading Estates—Special Areas,” Memorandum by Transport and General Workers' Union, 12 April 1939; and Table V-31 in Heim, “Uneven Regional Development.”

12 P.R.O. T187/3, S.A.L.A.C., Notes for Meeting on 29 July 1939; Nuffield Trust Papers, Nuffield Library, Oxford, Minute Books, Meetings of 26 June 1939 and 10 July 1939.Google Scholar

13 Smithies, Edward, “The Contrast between North and South in England, 1918–1939: A Study of Economic, Social and Political Problems with Particular Reference to the Experience of Burnley, Halifax, Ipswich, and Luton” (D.PhiI. thesis, University of Leeds, 1974), pp. 236–37.Google Scholar

14 For further discussion see Heim, “Uneven Regional Development,” especially pp. 269–81 and 636–38.Google Scholar