Young Workers and the Collapse of Entry

H. G. Vipond

This page is a visual summary of my paper on the mechanization of the English bootmaking industry. It rebuilds the paper's figures as interactive graphics.

Abstract

New technologies swept through Britain during the Second Industrial Revolution, destroying old jobs and creating new ones. We know little about how workers reallocated. Using 170 million full-count British census observations (1851–1911), I construct new task-level data on occupation and investigate English bootmaking as it mechanized. 153,000 artisanal jobs disappeared as skills became obsolete; 140,000 specialized jobs emerged. Incumbent artisans did not take the new jobs, nor were they displaced. Instead, entry collapsed — young men stopped entering the old trade. New jobs went primarily to young workers, though not in the same locations. Young cohorts absorbed the adjustment.

JEL codes: O33, N33, J24, J61, J62

1. New Evidence

The new, granular data on occupation reveals structural change that was entirely obscured at the industry level of analysis. I find that approximately 153,000 old, artisanal bootmaking jobs disappeared as the industry mechanized, while 140,000 new, more specialized jobs emerged. At the national level, the countervailing forces of job loss and job creation nearly netted out. However, that was not true at the regional level. The older, artisanal jobs disappeared in every English county following mechanization, while the new jobs were heavily concentrated in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. The geography of the industry shifted, and became much more heavily concentrated.

1.1 Job Loss and Creation

Having classified the textual descriptions of occupation for the 1.3 million individual level observations of English bootmakers from 1851–1911 into micro-occupations, it is now possible to assess the impact of mechanization on the occupational structure of the bootmaking industry at both the industry level and the new “task” level.

The first finding is the extent to which the “task” level of analysis reveals changes in the occupational structure which were almost entirely masked at the industry level. If we assess the impacts of mechanization on total employment in the bootmaking industry — at the industry level — we see only minimal impact. Prior to mechanization, in 1851, the English bootmaking industry employed approximately 222,000 workers. By 1911, post-mechanization, it employed approximately the same. This may seem to suggest little impact.

Notes: This figure reports employment in the English bootmaking industry aggregated at the industry level (Panel A) and disaggregated to the task level (Panels B and C). Panel A shows that total employment in bootmaking remained relatively stable over the period of mechanization. Panel B shows a sustained decline in traditional artisanal tasks, with approximately 153,000 jobs disappearing nationally. Panel C shows the emergence of roughly 140,000 new, more specialized tasks associated with mechanized production.

On this version: counts are person-level observations in the expanded cleaned English bootmaker sample; unclassified occupation strings are excluded. The vertical marker is 1857, the year the first bootmaking sewing machines were imported into England and set to work. There is no 1871 census in the ICeM data. Hover a band for its count and share; click a task in the legend to isolate it. Source: data derived by the author from ICeM full-count census microdata.

However, the new “tasks” level of analysis makes it possible to pry open this black box. I define the “old” tasks as those which, together, were responsible for the employment of 97% of all English bootmakers prior to mechanization (in 1851 and 1861). These were the “Shoemakers”, “Cordwainers”, “Cloggers”, “Binders”, and “Closers”. As mechanization set in, the old jobs monotonically declined. In total, 153,000 artisanal bootmaking jobs disappeared over the period.

Simultaneously, a set of new, more specialized jobs emerged. In total, 140,000 new jobs emerged over the period, in work including but not limited to: sewing machinists, riveters, operators, and the foremen and managers in the factories. A more modern production process was displacing the older, artisanal one.

At the national level, the countervailing forces of job creation and job loss as the English bootmaking industry mechanized very nearly balanced out. Given the large increase in productivity associated with mechanization, far fewer workers would have been required to produce a given number of boots. Since the number of bootmakers did not fall to a fifth of its 1851 level, production must therefore have increased — substantially. This takes us into Jevons' paradox territory (Jevons, 1865). The fall in the cost of boots appears to have generated a sufficiently large increase in demand to offset much of the labour-saving effect of the new technology. Although job loss and job creation nearly balanced out at the national level, this was not at all the case at the more regional level. The following section turns to the geography of creative destruction at the county level.

1.2 Geography

My second finding is that the industry relocated spatially. The new task level of analysis shows that artisanal jobs disappeared in every county in England, while the new jobs emerged primarily in only a few counties. The figure below illustrates the total change in the number of bootmakers employed in “new” and “old” tasks, by county, between 1851 and 1911.

Notes: This figure reports county-level changes in the number of bootmakers employed, by task category, between 1851 and 1911. Panel A shows the change in the number of workers employed in traditional artisanal bootmaking tasks. Panel B shows the corresponding change in employment in newly emerging, more specialized bootmaking tasks. Counties are ordered by the size of their artisanal loss. Hover a county to read both figures and the net change. Source: data derived by the author from ICeM full-count census microdata.

The overall picture is one in which the older and more general types of work declined in every county in England, while employment in the new and more specialized tasks emerged in only a select few. The result is that the balancing of countervailing forces which we saw at the national level did not take place at the more local level. In most counties the bootmaking industry as a whole went into decline. In two counties — Northamptonshire and Leicestershire — the loss of employment in the older tasks was more than compensated by the surge in new opportunities, and the bootmaking industry flourished.

Interpreted geographically, the net result was a tectonic shift in the location of the industry. Nearly half of the new jobs were generated in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire alone, and those two counties became the enclaves of English bootmaking.

The same shift, census by census

The figure above collapses six decades into a single number per county. The maps below unfold it again: drag the year slider, or press play, to watch the artisanal trade drain out of the country while the new work pools into Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.

Notes: This figure reports county-level numbers of bootmakers employed, by task category. Panel A shows the number of workers employed in traditional artisanal bootmaking tasks. Panel B shows employment in newly emerging, more specialized bootmaking tasks.

On this version: where the paper's Figure 2 reports the total change between 1851 and 1911, these maps report the level in each census year, so that the change can be played through. Each map keeps a single colour scale fixed across all six years, so a county fading between years is a real fall in employment rather than an artefact of rescaling; bands are anchored to the maximum observed in that measure over the whole period. Wales is outside the sample and is shown in grey. There is no 1871 census in the ICeM data. Hover any county to read its numbers across all three panels. Source: data derived by the author from ICeM full-count census microdata.