This video from OMG (One Minute Geography) Revision looks at how the UK’s employment structure (what people do for their job) has changed over the past 200 years. In the year 1800, most people worked in the primary sector in jobs such as farming. Moving on to the year 1900, there had been a huge shift from primary industry to secondary industry as a result of the industrial revolution. Moving even closer to the present day, in the Year 2000, the UK’s employment structure had changed again with the majority of people now working in the tertiary (service) sector and the introduction of the quaternary sector of industry becoming significant. Examples of quaternary sector jobs are people working in creative industries such as music production and scientific industries such as vaccine design. There are three key reasons that the UK’s employment structure changed that are deindustrialisation, globalisation and government policy changes. Deindustrialisation is the closure of manufacturing facilities (factories) as UK business owners struggled to make a profit as products were imported from abroad. Also, the introduction of robots and workforce mechanisation meant that factories no longer needed the army of workers that they used to need. Globalisation is the spread of ideas and technology around the world due to improvements in transport and communication. As a result of globalisation, many British entrepreneurs started importing foreign made goods that had been produced using cheaper labour. Finally, government policy changes led to a decline in primary and secondary industries in the UK. For example, Margaret Thatcher reduce subsidies for coal miners and the UK coal industry simply couldn’t compete with cheaper foreign imports and the majority of UK coal mines were closed down. To revise this topic, you could create a timeline of events that led to the changes in UK employment structure.

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