Scotland Dep — Current theme: Industry

Even the first census of 1801 divided the population into those 'chiefly employed in agriculture', those 'chiefly employed in trade, manufacturers or handicraft', and others. From 1841 onwards, information was gathered on each person's occupation and this formed the basis for very detailed tables. The 1841 occupational tables, used here, listed over 3,000 different occupational titles. This was partly because no advance plans had been made for dealing with the enormous range of job titles people gave, but by 1881 the more organised classification used in the county level tables covered 414 categories. When providing an overview of how economic activity has changed since 1841, we are blending together very diverse data, so we use a simple seven-way classification.

In general, early census reports applied just one classification to occupations, which led to three separate issues getting mixed up: social status, what the individual worker did ("occupation"), and what their employer's business was ("industry"). Modern censuses have separate tables for each of these, and from 1931 onwards we mainly present data on industry. NB our 1841 data are geographically crude, which results in some districts in the same county having identical figures.



We hold these detailed statistics for Scotland, which we graph and tabulate here:

Available datasets Period covered Variables
(number of categories)
All occupied persons, in 3 Categories 1831 1801 Occupational Categories (3)
Industrial Order (1931) by Sex 1931 Sex (2)
1931 Industrial Orders (22)
Industrial Order (1951) by Sex 1951 Sex (2)
1951 Industrial Orders (25)
Males aged 20 & over, in 9 occupational categories 1831 1831 Occupational Categories (9)
Males aged 20 & over, in four industrial categories 1831 1831 Occupational Categories (simplified) (4)
Occupation data classified by the Booth main sectors plus sex 1841 Sex (2)
Booth-Armstrong Industrial Sectors (10)
Occupation data classified into the 24 1881 'Orders', plus sex 1881 Sex (2)
1881 Occupational Orders (25)
Persons Aged over 10 by Sex, Age & 1911 Occupational Order 1911 Sex (2)
1911 Occupation Tables Age Groups (11)
1911 Occupational Classification (23)
Persons of Working Age by Sex & 1911 Occupational Order 1911 Sex (2)
1911 Occupational Classification (23)
Simplified Industrial Structure 1841 to 2011 Industry Sector (7)
Standard Industrial Classification (2007) 2011 2011 Industrial Classification (20)
Standard Industrial Classification (2007), by sex 1841 to 1971 Sex (2)
2011 Industrial Classification (20)
Standardised Industrial Classification (1968) by Sex 1971 Sex (2)
Standard Industrial Classification (1968) (28)
Total employed in all industries 1841 to 2011 Employed in all Industries (2)
Workers in Manufacturing 2011 2011 Classification of Manufacturing (7)
Workers in Manufacturing, by sex 1841 to 1971 Sex (2)
2011 Classification of Manufacturing (7)

Read more about how we hold statistics here.