Labour Force

The statistics in this section cover a wide range of topics and come from a variety of sources. The occupation data up to 1966 were largely derived by Professor Bairoch and his colleagues from national censuses of population, and are therefore rather limited in coverage for Africa and parts of Asia. The problems of accuracy referred to in the last section appear here also. But a still more significant difficulty is the very considerable variations which have occurred in classification, both between countries and over time. Professor Bairoch’s group refer to ‘the frequent changes in criteria and methods used in census taking’, and say that ‘it is practically impossible to come up with statistics that are perfectly comparable in time and space’.1 The best we can hope for, therefore, is that the figures in table B1 are usable as a guide to structural changes within countries and for rough international comparisons.