When did Britain industrialise? The sectoral distribution of the labour force and labour productivity in Britain, 1381–1851

Abstract

Britain's labour force industrialised early. The industrial and service sectors already accounted for 40 per cent of the labour force in 1381, and a substantial further shift of labour out of agriculture occurred between 1522 and 1700. From the early seventeenth century rising agricultural labour productivity underpinned steadily increasing employment in industry and services, so that by 1759 agriculture's share of the labour force had shrunk to 37 per cent and industry's grown to 34 per cent. Thereafter, industry's output acceleration during the Industrial Revolution owed more to gains in labour productivity consequent upon mechanisation than the expansion of employment.JEL classification: J21, N13, N33, O14, O52

Growth and Structural Transformation

“…The primary strength of EU KLEMS in documenting patterns in employment and value added shares is that it has the most complete information for all variables of interest, including sectoral hours worked, and that its value added data have been constructed from the national accounts of individual countries following a harmonized procedure that aims to ensure crosscountry comparability. 12 The primary weakness of EU KLEMS is that its coverage is limited to countries with relatively high income; South Korea during the early 1970s is the country with 9 This finding is confirmed by the historical study of Broadberry et al (2011), who present evidence for England during the 14 th century that the employment share of services was around 20%.…”

Accounting for Breakout in Britain: The Industrial Revolution Through a Malthusian Lens

“…Previous estimates by Wrigley (1985) and Overton and Campbell (1996) have been contested by recent scholarship (Broadberry et al, 2013;Clark, 2013;Clark et al, 2012). However, the estimates provided by Broadberry et al Until new and better evidence becomes available, it is not clear which point of view will stand the test of time (Leunig, 2013), and as such, it is not obvious which estimates are the right ones.…”

“…We assume that all land rents derive from agriculture prior to the 18th century, as rents paid on coal mines even in 1860 were at most 4% of agricultural rents, and were negligible before this time. 9 We then combine data on the share of agricultural income paid to land (Allen, 2005) 10 , share of labor force in agriculture (Broadberry et al, 2013;Clark, 2013;Clark et al, 2012), and the productivity differential of agriculture and other sectors (Broadberry et al, 2013) to determine the share of output paid as land rents.…”

Economic Development in Africa and Europe: Reciprocal Comparisons

“…We are grateful to Leandro Prados de la Escosura for making the individual country data available. Broadberry et al (2013); Allen (2000, pp. 8-9); Mitchell (1998).…”