Rate
:
Manufacturing
Rates are used to define comparative statistics that can be
mapped and graphed.
For example, our occupational information includes counts
of the number of workers in employment and out of employment,
as well as the total number of workers.
We then define a measure called the 'Unemployment Rate',
which uses the number out of work rather than the number
in work, and expresses it as a percentage of the total,
rather than a rate per thousand.
The descriptive text in the system is defined mainly
for rates.
- Identifier:
-
R_IND_MAN
- Name:
-
Manufacturing
- Type:
-
Rate (R)
- Definition:
-
IND_SECTOR_5WAY:manuf
*
100.0
/
INDUSTRY_TOT:total
- Display as:
- Continuous time series
- Text:
-
Despite Britain's reputation as the 'workshop of the world', manufacturing employed
only slightly more people than services in 1841, and by 1881 it employed significantly less.
Our 19th century data tend to overstate the size of manufacturing, because many goods counted as
'manufacturing' were made not in factories but in small workshops behind shops run by the people making the goods.
In 1841 this meant most districts had 20-30% of the workforce in manufacturing.
A small group of districts had over 50% of their workforces in manufacturing,
mostly in a single dominant industry, like textiles, pottery or shoe-making.
Excepting London, manufacturing was concentrated mainly in the north and midlands.
Single industry communities were clearly unable to provide their populations with a full range of services.
As they matured, both the overall proportion in manufacturing and the numbers in their dominant industries declined.
The concentration of manufacturing into the north continued up to 1931, but new industrial centres
based on consumer goods were growing in the south.
In modern Britain, the most prosperous areas contain few factories.
Instead, they have become centres of management, marketing and research for goods
which are physically manufactured somewhere else, including outside Britain altogether.
Rate
"Manufacturing" is contained within:
Themes, which organise the database into broad topics:
Rate
"Manufacturing" contains no lower-level entities.
