This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Put yourself in the shoes of a bootmaker in 19th-century England. Bootmaking was a sophisticated craft that involved cutting and stitching leather.
It required skill, experience and time. It was also one of England's leading industries: By 1851, the country was home to about 220,000 bootmakers. Sewing machines capable of working with heavy boot leather were rapidly adopted, boosting productivity.
Workers could produce four to eight times as many boots in the same time frame, transforming the industry. By 1911, two-thirds of artisanal bootmaking jobs had disappeared. Job destruction, however, is only half the story, says Hillary Vipond, an economic historian and postdoctoral fellow at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH).
"Historically, new technologies have also created jobs, but we know very little about that side of the coin." Drawing on English census records from 1851 to 1911, Vipond quantified both job loss and creation as the bootmaking industry mechanized, from its onset to completion. She found a relatively small net loss of jobs, and existing bootmakers generally did not face labor displacement. "To my surprise, they were not pushed out of their jobs, nor did they move to places where new opportunities emerged." Instead, their trade disappeared over time as the younger generation stopped entering it.
Vipond found that 153,000 traditional bootmaking jobs were rendered obsolete as the industry mechanized. In the same period, 140,000 new roles were created, including jobs in machine operation, sales, management, administration and more specialized tasks that became part of the new production process. However, those new jobs were not equally available to everyone.
As the industry shifted to factory work, the new jobs increasingly concentrated in places where large factories were built. "Of the new jobs, 44% emerged in just two counties: Northamptonshire and Leicestershire," Vipond reports. The new jobs also went primarily to young workers.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
