1

Changes in the occupational structure of Spain, 1877-1981

**This is a very preliminary draft presenting first estimates and results, prepared for the

INCHOS Conference, Cambridge, 29-31 July, and to be considered work in progress at its

earlier stages. It is not to be circulated/quoted beyond the conference**

Natalia Mora-Sitja

Cambridge University

nm371@cam.ac.uk

This paper offers a long-run view of changes in the occupational structure for Spain, a late

industrializing economy. It uses data from the Population Censuses since 1877 specially adapted in

most sections to the PST system devised by E.A. Wrigley. Patterns of structural change and their

relationship to economic growth are described. Special attention is paid to women’s work and regional

development patterns. At this stage the paper just provides a very broad overview of the empirical

results and some reflections for further research.

2

Introduction

Very few studies have analysed –or indeed presented- changes in the

occupational structure of the Spanish population for over a century. Sáez’s research,

published in the 1970s, was more focused on demographic trends than on economic

activity changes1; more recently, Erdozáin and Mikelarena provided long-run figures

for employment in the agrarian sector, including a regional breakdown that will be

used later in this paper, but said nothing about the secondary and tertiary sectors2. The

closest to the data here presented is probably found in Carreras and Tafunell’s

textbook on Spanish economic history3: they provide a classification of the labour

force by sectors since 1877 –with just slightly different figures since they do not

follow the PST classification system- but being theirs a work of synthesis only devote

two pages to its analysis, without referring to female activity rates or regional

patterns. Most commonly, historians studying Spanish industrialization and structural

change have generally focused on the decades up to the Spanish Civil War4, a

historical event that imposed many political, social and economic discontinuities. In

short, long-run analyses of structural change have not proliferated.

Ideally, one would one to study structural change since the early nineteenth

and until the late twentieth centuries. Such a perspective would allow analysis of the

early industrialization attempt of 1830-1860, a classical period of growth based on the

development of the textile industry; the growth associated with electrification and

massive public works of the 1920s; and finally the long decade of extremely rapid

growth in the 1960s after the liberalization of the economy. However, this paper will

only cover the period from 1877 onwards, since dealing with the information

provided by the earlier censuses will take more time. In the future it is expected that

this investigation will look back on those.

1 Sáez, A., Población y actividad económica en España (1975)

2 Erdozáin Azpilicueta, P., and Mikelarena Peña, F., ‘Las cifras de activos agrarios de los censos de

población españoles del periodo 1877-1991. Un análisis crítico’, Boletín de la Asociación de

Demografía Histórica, XVII, I (1999), pp. 89-113. 3 Carreras, A. and Tafunell, X., Historia Económica de la España Contemporánea (2003), p.453

4 See for example Soto Carmona, A., El trabajo industrial en la España contemporánea (1874-1936)

(1989); or Tirado, D.A., Pons, J., and Paluzie, E., ‘Los cambios en la localización de la actividad

industrial en España, 1850-1936. Un análisis desde la Nueva Geografía Económica’, Revista de

Historia Industrial, 31 (2006)

3

This paper will first discuss the dataset and methodological problems

encountered, to then move onto a description of changes in occupational structure and

their relationship to growth patterns. The last two sections will focus on female

activity rates and regional patterns of development.

The Population Censuses

The most consistent sources of information for occupational structure are the

Population Censuses. There are two censuses for the eighteenth-century, in 1787 and

1797, which already provide information about sex, age, and occupation (the latter

more detailed in the 1797 census). However, it is not until 1860 that we find the first

proper nominative survey of the Spanish population carried for purely statistical

purposes. The 1860 Census and the next nineteenth-century censuses (1877 and 1887)

provide, despite their shortcomings, a much better coverage than the eighteenth-

century censuses. This paper will use the information provided by the censuses from

1877 onwards, with a view of extending the analysis back in time at a later stage.

For the purposes of this investigation, there are two important obstacles to overcome

when using the Population Censuses. The first is the recording and classification of

professional activities, and the second the recording of female activity.

Occupations

Occupational classifications in the early censuses are not homogenous and

present important deficiencies. Under the same category (activity/occupation),

different responses appear: either the activity sector or the profession/trade are the

most common.5 For certain occupations, such as doctors and pharmaceutics, there is a

lot of detail, while other collectives such as labourers or domestic servants appear

with very general descriptions and often do not specify the economic sector in which

they work (for labourers). This confusion arises from the fact that the question on

‘activity’ was very general and vague in the early censuses, so the responses were

5 Gil Ibáñez, S., ‘Un intento de homogenización de las clasificaciones profesionales en España (1860-

1930)’, Revista Internacional de Sociología 25 (1978): 7-40.

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varied.6 The 1900 census is the first that addresses the problems of classifying the

active population and adopts the classification devised by Jacques Bertillon (of 91

categories) approved by the Statistical International Institute in 1893. The 1930

census, with 129 occupational groups, brings more improvements, and it is from 1950

onwards that the classification of the active population starts following modern

criteria, specifying the economic sector (defined as the product or service offered by

the company one works for), profession (individual skill) and social condition

(waged/salaried worker or owner).

This paper will use information from the final published tables of the

censuses, where a lot of detail is lost given the level of aggregation. There are around

10 economic activities/sectors that have then been further aggregated into the PST

system. Future explorations of the censuses, however, should reveal more nuanced

approaches to such a classification.

Women’s work

The second problem, the under-recording of female activity, is common to

most European historical censuses, and quite a lot has been said on the reliability of

state statistics to quantify women’s work in Spain.7 The criteria used by the National

Population Censuses varied over time, often reflecting different models of sexual

division of labour. The 1857/60 Census was the first in which information was to be

provided for individuals, as opposed to families. However, it still stated there that

only the occupation of the head of the household would be recorded unless other

members of the family had a different occupation. The 1877 Census, the first used

here, highlights another problem on top of under-recording: the variety of approaches

to and different understanding of how to record women’s work, depending on the

locality. Were one to measure or specify a bias in the recording of female labour, this

would have to be region –or village-specific. This same census established that the

‘profession/occupation’ cell could only be left empty for those whose living depended

on the head of the household: women, children and the incapacitated.

6 Pérez Moreda (1983)

7 Pérez Fuentes, P., ‘El trabajo de las mujeres en la España de los siglos XIX y XX. Consideraciones

metodológicas’, Arenal, 2, 2 (1995), pp.219-45

5

The Censuses gave different treatments to ‘domestic service’ as an occupation,

and these reflect indeed ideas on ‘domesticity’.8 From 1900 onwards, ‘domestic

service’ was a distinct occupation in the summary of the national censuses,

subdivided in turn in ‘members of the family’ and ‘domestic servants’. The first

category would, of course, include women who until then had been included under the

‘no occupation’ category. The 1940 Census, the first after the Civil War, reflects

already the gender ideology of Francoism, whereby women’s place was at home and

women’s work was to take care of the family. Women’s occupations were here

classified as ‘sus labores’ (meaning housewife, but literally translating into ‘her job’).

The most important outcome of the above-mentioned practices was the under-

recording of female activity, which was particularly serious in the agricultural sector.

Women’s activity in agriculture in the period 1877-1930 was, according to Espina,

much better recorded in the first censuses than in the later ones.9 We need therefore to

be careful with any interpretation of the figures on female activity rates.

Structural change

Table 1 shows the shares of active population in the primary, secondary and

tertiary sectors, using the PST classification system.

Table 1: Share of active population per sector, Spain 1877-1981

PST classification 1877 1887 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1981

Primary 70% 69% 70% 68% 59% 47% 52% 50% 40% 25% 16%

Secondary 13% 15% 14% 15% 21% 26% 22% 26% 29% 37% 36%

Tertiary 17% 15% 16% 17% 20% 27% 27% 25% 27% 36% 46%

Others/undefined 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 5% 1% 2%

SOURCES: Calculated from Census data, available at Carreras, A. and Tafunell, X. (coords.),

Estadísticas históricas de España, Siglos XIX-XX (2005) [EHES]

8 Borderías, C., ‘La evolución de la actividad femenina en la formación del mercado de trabajo

barcelonés, 1856-1930’, unpublished paper 9 Espina, A., ‘La participación femenina en la actividad económica. El caso español’, en Conde, R.,

Familia y cambio social en España (1982)

6

It is clear that the primary sector dominated the Spanish economy for many

decades. Not until the second decade of the twentieth century it began to lose weight

in a significant way. Between 1910 and 1930, the percentage of the labour force in the

primary sector decreased from 68% to 47%. This is a period of important structural

transformations: Spanish neutrality during World War I boosted Spanish exports to

belligerent countries –whose economy had been disrupted- and to non-belligerent

countries –who could not get now supplies formerly imported from countries at war.

Both agriculture and mining particularly benefited from this. In the 1920s, under

Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, the state pursued a very active role in the economy

and through massive public spending (and deficit) engaged in a program of

infrastructure building that boosted industry, and particularly the construction and

electricity sectors. This decade also witnessed the first massive wave of rural-urban

migration, and an increase in urbanization rates.

The decade between 1930 and 1940 masks two very distinct –and crucial-

historical periods: the Second Republic (1931-1936) and the Spanish Civil War

(1936-9). The troubled 5 years of the Second Republic coincide with the Great

Depression and one could argue that the industrialization process witnessed in the

1920s was already halted in the early 1930s. However, it was the Civil War, and the

two decades of autarky that followed, that really hindered any economic development.

Not until the mid 1950s would Spain reach again the GDP/capita levels of the mid

1930s, and as we can see in Table 1 structural change followed a similar pattern of

stagnation.

It was after 1950, and particularly in the 1960s (following the Stabilization

Plan of 1959, a set of liberalizing measures), that agricultural improvements

facilitated the release of labour for industry and services, and by 1970 both the

secondary and the tertiary sector employed more people than the primary sector.

These are the true decades of an industrialization process that had kick-started earlier

in the century.

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Figure 1: Share of the primary sector and economic growth

SOURCES: For the primary sector, see table 1 above. GDP/cap from EHES

Figure 1 plots the share of active population per sector and the evolution of

GDP/capita, and the parallel (inverse) evolution of both series is evident. When

looking at the sectorial distribution of the active population, it is also interesting to

compare it to the sectorial distribution of GDP. Figure 2 provides the percentage of

GDP generated by the three economic sectors. We can here see that up to 1920 the

secondary sector grew at a faster rate than the primary sector, although it is hard to

distinguish the shorter-run trends. The 1920s were, as highlighted above and clearly

seen in the figure below, favorable to the industrial sector, and the de-industrialization

that followed was accompanied by a higher weight of both agriculture and services.

Interestingly, when recovery started in the 1950s it took just the form of a transfer of

production (and labour) from the primary to the secondary sector, and it was not until

the 1960s that the service sector increased its share in the economy

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1877 1887 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1981

GDP/cap (1981=100)

%Primary sector

8

Figure 2: The sectorial distribution of total GDP

SOURCES: Prados de la Escosura, L., Spain’s Gross Domestic Product, 1850-1993: Quantitative

Conjectures (1995)

Women’s work

In the earlier discussion of the data provided by the Population Censuses, I

have already outlined the problems in dealing with data on women, and the

unreliability of these sources to estimate real female activity rates. Still, in this section

I will present the data as it stems from the censuses in order to have a general

overview of women’s work and structural change.

Table 2 provides information on the percentage of men and women in the

labour force as recorded by the Censuses. As we can see, the overwhelming majority

of workers are male. The third column provides the percentage of the female labour

force to the total female population aged 15-64, and although this variable is here

defined as ‘female employment rate’, we might consider it an activity rate if we

assume there is no unemployment. Again, these numbers are very low, and again they

underestimate the true ones. The under-registration bias seems to be particularly big

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980

Primary sector

Secondary sector

Tertiary sector

9

for the first decades of the twentieth century, when female employment rates seem to

decline without any historical evidence supporting this trend. The low female

employment rates of the 1940s and 1950s seem slightly more plausible: the discourse

on domesticity during Francoism was very strong, and most women worked as

housewives. Still, UN and OECD reports for the latter decades tend to confirm that

female activity rates in Spain have since 1950 (when official statistics begin) been

amongst the lowest in Europe.

Table 2: Women in the labour force

Year % males % females female employment rate

1877 79.63% 20.37% 26.62%

1887 79.78% 20.22% 25.26%

1900 81.79% 18.21% 22.87%

1910 86.55% 13.45% 16.10%

1920 87.07% 12.93% 14.71%

1930 87.25% 12.75% 14.55%

1940 87.89% 12.11% 12.91%

1950 84.17% 15.83% 17.58%

1960 79.86% 20.14% 23.55%

1970 80.40% 19.60% 21.52%

1981 76.60% 23.40% 20.96%

SOURCES: Own elaboration from EHES. Female activity rate is defined as the ratio of women

employed relative to the female population aged 15-64 (assumed to be the active population)

How were these women distributed across economic sectors? Table 3 provides

two variables for each sector: the first is the percentage of working women who work

in each sector, defined as the number of women working in that sector relative to the

total number of working women (Fp,s,t/F; PST referring to the sectorial

classification). The first columns refer therefore to the sectorial distribution of female

employment. The second columns report the percentage of workers in each sector

who are female, defined as the number of women in each sector (Fp,s.t) relative to the

total number of workers in each sector (Lp,s,t).

In the long run, we can observe a remarkable continuity in the percentage of women

employed by each sector. All sectors are male dominated, but the primary sector

particularly so. The tertiary sector is the one employing more women, with women

reaching a third of the workforce in services in the late nineteenth and late twentieth

centuries. In industry, women’s presence has been more or less stable (around 15%).

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Table 3: Distirbution of employed women across sectors and women employed in each sector

Year Primary sector Secondary sector Tertiary sector

Fp/F Fp/Lp Fs/F Fs/Ls Ft/F Ft/Lt

1877 64.00% 18.5% 9.81% 15.9% 26.19% 31.4%

1887 58.05% 16.9% 13.75% 18.2% 28.20% 37.1%

1900 60.33% 15.7% 12.99% 16.6% 26.68% 30.9%

1910 44.98% 8.9% 17.58% 15.9% 37.45% 29.5%

1920 31.76% 7.0% 27.34% 16.8% 40.90% 26.5%

1930 23.84% 6.4% 28.45% 14.1% 47.71% 22.4%

1940 23.48% 5.5% 26.53% 14.9% 50.00% 22.8%

1950 24.45% 7.8% 25.27% 15.7% 50.27% 32.0%

1960 27.80% 12.4% 26.20% 16.2% 45.99% 30.2%

1970 13.56% 10.6% 31.50% 16.3% 54.93% 29.1%

1981 9.42% 13.8% 23.77% 15.0% 66.81% 33.2%

Regarding the distribution of women across sectors, historians have

highlighted the secular decrease in women’s participation in the primary sector

accompanied by an increasing presence in the secondary and particularly the tertiary

sectors.10

The problem is that this description (which agrees with the first columns in

Table 3) confuses changes in women’s involvement in the different sectors with

changes in the weight of the sectors themselves. So while it is true that the percentage

of women engaged in agricultural activities has decreased remarkably, so has the

percentage of men, simply because the weight of the primary sector has decreased

secularly. The relevant question is whether women’s relative involvement in the

economic sectors has changed. I propose to look here at the distribution of employed

women across sectors comparing it directly to the sectorial distribution of the

employed population. This can be done by using a sort of ‘female intensity’ index for

each sector that takes into account structural change. The ‘female intensity’ index can

be defined as follows:

L

LF

F

Ii

i

F =

10

Folguera, P., Historia de las mujeres en España (1997)

11

Where Fi is the number of women in each economic sector, F is the total number of

working women, Li is the number of workers in each economic sector and L is the

total number of workers. The index is therefore a ratio of the distribution of women

across sectors relative to the distribution of workers across sectors. An index higher

(or lower) than 1 indicates that women are overrepresented (or underrepresented) in a

given sector. Where the series diverge (or converge) from (to) 1, gender segregation

in the economy increases (or decreases). Figure 3 plots the index for the three sectors

across time. We can clearly see that women have always been overrepresented in the

tertiary sector and underrepresented in the primary sector. The secondary sector,

however, has shown more volatility (and less segregation): women’s participation in

industry relatively increased during the first industrialization spurt, but decreased

during the second and most important one. Conversely, since the 1950s women’s

over-involvement in the tertiary sector has declined, while they have been more likely

to work in the primary sector. It would be interesting to explore whether this changing

patterns follow in any way changing relative wages, and whether women simply

‘follow’ –or are allocated to- the lowest paid sectors. The case I am thinking of is

services, since while average wages in the sector were relatively low a century ago,

they are quite high in contemporary economies.

Figure 3. Female intensity indexes for the three economic sectors

0

1

2

1877 1887 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1981

Primary sector

Secondary sector

Tertiary sector

12

Regional patterns

In order to provide an overview on regional patterns of development, I have

collected provincial data from a secondary source that lists the percentage of active

population employed in agriculture per province and per census year.11

Note that we

are dealing here with agriculture and not the primary sector as defined by the PST

system. The maps provided show the progressive industrialization of Spain over a

century, with a clear turning point around the 1950s, when the map quickly ‘darkens’

–darker shades indicate lower percentages of workers in agriculture.

The maps serve to show the location of the early poles of industrialization: in the

north-east, Catalonia, led by Barcelona and specialised in textiles and other consumer

goods industries; and in the north, the Basque Country, where mining and metallurgy

concentrated. In addition there are other smaller poles: Madrid, where as the political

capital we expect the weight of the service sector to be high; the coast south of

Valencia, also known for the development of the textile industry; and the south-west

of Andalusia, where an internationally competitive wine and sherry industry probably

created job opportunities in manufacturing and the commercial sectors. Although

even these leading regions industrialized quite late, it is remarkable the contrast with

the most underdeveloped regions of Spain, where over half of the active population

(and often around 70%) remained working in agriculture until late in the twentieth

century. These would include Extremadura (Cáceres and Badajoz), parts of Castilla la

Mancha (particularly Cuenca) and Galicia (Lugo, Orense, Pontevedra, Coruña), all of

them –and particularly the latter- regions of high emigration rates.

11

Erdozáin Azpilicueta, P., and Mikelarena Peña, F., ‘Las cifras de activos agrarios de los censos de

población españoles del periodo 1877-1991. Un análisis crítico’, Boletín de la Asociación de

Demografía Histórica, XVII, I (1999), pp. 89-113

13

Percentage of active population employed in agriculture

Maps of Spanish provinces, 1877-1981

14

15

16

17

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18

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