The two most striking differences between Ireland’s world of work in 1926 and 2022 are arguably the million additional people in jobs and the dramatic fall in reliance on the land for employment.
But the Census 1926 figures highlight many other ways in which the landscape has changed. For example, where do you find a good scutcher these days when you need one?
While the number of people in work increased from just over 1.3 million to more than 2.3 million, three-quarters of the change is accounted for by more women joining the workforce. The male/female proportions have shifted from 74/26 to 53/47.
This change is highlighted in the huge growth in women’s representation in the professions and many other types of work over the course of the century. The trades, in general, remain boys’ clubs, though there were at least 61 women plumbers among the 10,467 who listed that as their occupation in 2022. Ninety-six years earlier there had not been a single one.
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The 1926 data underlines Ireland’s status as a place dependent on the land. Fifty-one per cent of the workforce said it was where they were employed, with more than 200,000 sons and daughters described as helping on family farms. Four years ago, just 4 per cent of the labour force was still farming.
The data shows 91,000 people were employed as domestic servants, with all but 3,500 of them women.
Several skilled lines of work have been consigned to history or become niche occupations in the intervening years, with the 1,000 coopers, 1,385 milliners and 826 embroiders among those for whom there is almost no modern-day equivalent.
There were 539 full-time drovers in Ireland a century ago, 527 timekeepers and gatekeepers, and 521 people who said they did nothing for a living bar selling newspapers.
There was a substantial domestic clothing manufacturing sector back then, with 1,066 people – 76 of them men, listing their occupation as “knitter”. Most would have to look up even the meanings of that industry’s “winders and warpers” or “breakers and scutchers” but handily there are search engines to help them do it.
Work in designing and maintaining search engines is just one of the many examples of roles that could not have been dreamt about back then, with “air travel assistants” and “environmental services managers” among the titles that might have surprised.
The percentage of people working in the professions, meanwhile, has more than doubled, from 4 per cent to 10 per cent, and the proportion of women doctors has gone from barely a tenth – 208 of 2,051 – to almost half, 7,031 of 15,181. Many inequalities linger but increased representation can only help to bring about further change.
In the legal professions, women have done a little better than that. Just three of the country’s 1,033 solicitors were women in 1926, but by 2022 there were 6,409 women barristers and judges – 122 more than there were men. With women accounting for the majority of new law graduates that is only going to grow.
There were 17 women among the country’s 4,609 mechanics in 1926, while in 2022 it was just 159 of 14,399 “vehicle technicians, mechanics and electricians”. A century ago all but 31 of the country’s 13,900 carpenters were male; the most recent returns put the number at 82 of 18,648.
Somewhat inevitably, the women of 1926 had the “nuns and postulants” heading cornered, accounting for 100 per cent of the 9,489 listed. The disproportionate number of nuns among the centurions named when the 1926 Census was recently published suggests it was a good line of work to get into from a longevity point of view. These days, nun is not a separate category and the total number of “clergy” in 2022 was put at 2,103, including 239 women.
The number of nurses and midwives increased more than tenfold during the 96-year period, prompting the question: What must the unions have been like about staffing levels back then?
