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% 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% and industry's grown to 34%. Thereafter, industry's output acceleration during the Industrial Revolution owed more to gains in labour productivity consequent upon mechanisation than the expansion of employment.

Introduction

Modern revisions to the story of Britain's industrialisation raise awkward questions about comparative advantage prior to and during the initial phase of the Industrial Revolution. Deane and Cole's (1967) once influential account of British economic development since 1688 was premised on an eighteenth-century agricultural revolution which released labour to industry at the very time that mechanisation and the division of labour were raising the productivity of labour in manufacturing. British-made goods thereby became unbeatable in world markets so that industry became the most dynamic employment sector within a fast-growing economy. Agricultural historians, however, in an important revision to this narrative, now see the agricultural revolution as having begun much sooner, in the early seventeenth century, so that agriculture's labour-force share was already much reduced before the industrial revolution got under way. The output estimates of Crafts (1985) and Crafts and Harley (1992) endorse this revision and, in turn, propose that industrial growth was slower during the eighteenth century than estimated by Deane and Cole, notwithstanding the continued transfer of labour out of agriculture and into industry. On this revised scenario eighteenth-century agriculture was more successful at shedding labour than industry was at expanding output. Hence the paradox that, at the very time that Britain was becoming the workshop rather than the granary of the world (Crafts, 1989), productivity growth in agriculture apparently exceeded that in industry.

To resolve this paradox this paper reconstructs the labour-force and output shares of the three principal sectors of agriculture, industry and services between 1381 and 1851. The labour-force estimates are reconstructed for benchmark years using the Poll Tax Returns of 1381, the Muster Rolls of 1522, and re-worked social tables for 1700, 1759, 1801 and 1851, paying particular attention to the differing sectoral participation rates of male and female workers. These estimates are then combined with reconstructions of sectoral output from Broadberry et al. (2011) to chart the growth of labour productivity by sector. Commencing from a firmly established late-medieval base, the critical structural shift of labour away from agriculture to industry occurred during the early modern period of vigorous proto-industrial growth. So much progress had been made by 1700 that the shift of labour from agriculture to industry during the eighteenth century was smaller than that proposed by Crafts and Harley, thereby reinstating industry as the sector with the fastest labour productivity growth during the classic Industrial Revolution period. Although there was also substantial agricultural labour productivity growth between 1700 and 1851, it was at a slower pace than in industry, thus reversing the most paradoxical finding of Crafts and Harley (1992). Yet while these findings reconcile the output estimates of Crafts and Harley with traditional views of an industrially dynamic Industrial Revolution they challenge those of Clark (2013-this issue), who argues for little or no trend growth in per capita incomes before 1800 and a relatively late final shift of labour out of agriculture. A critical evaluation of Clark's estimates thus comprises the final section of the paper.