The Industrial Age and
Employment The industrial age has been the only
period of human history in which most people’s work has taken the form of jobs.
The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work
patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting
thought. But, in fact, it could offer the prospect of a better future for work.
Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic
freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of
the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving
them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for
themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed
work from people’s homes. Later, as transport improved, first by rail and then
by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until,
eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the
places in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at
a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, men and women had shared the productive
work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the
husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and
families to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today,
and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.
It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became
the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded—a problem
now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want
to live active lives. All this may now have to change. The
time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the
idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping
many people to manage without full-time jobs. The established work patterns may be changed with the closing of the
industrial age.