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thomas davison

The way we worked, 60 years ago: Flexible hours and more time off now... but we're no happierBy Becky Barrow

Last updated at 1:38 AM on 1st February 2012

It was an era when women stayed at home, a 9-to-5 job meant just that, workers had a job for life and nobody had a Blackberry to ruin their holidays.

But were the 1950s exactly how everybody imagines? A major report, published today, examines working life in 1952 � and what it is like for workers in this country 60 years later.

The world of work has fundamentally changed, but it is not a change which is making many of us happy, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Blast from the past: A happy family scene on the beach 1950 when most Britain's spent their holidays in the UK

Now many Brits can afford to travel abroad to locations such as Benidorm Beach in Costa Blanca, Spain, with the UK having a 28 days minimum holiday
Dr John Philpott, the report�s author and chief economic adviser to the institute, said: �People do not seem much happier about their working lives. Many exhibit the symptoms of work-related stress.�

He blamed the invention of new technology, from laptops to the BlackBerry and the iPhone, which is �imposing entirely new pressures on staff.�

While it has liberated people to work from home or from outside the office, it has resulted in �information overload, created pressure for an instant response, enabled more sophisticated monitoring and surveillance of employees, and blurred the boundaries between work and non-work time.�

A 1950s Butlin's holidays advertisement when workers only received an average of 16 days holiday a year
Overall, the report says work continues to be �the warp and weft of everyday life�, but we are just doing it very differently.
In 1952, just four per cent of people worked part-time. Today, the number has ballooned to one in four workers, equal to astonishing 26 per cent of the entire workforce.

Today�s workers may whinge that they are over-worked, but it was their parents or grandparents in the 1950s who had a lot more to complain about.

On average, workers did a 48-hour week in 1952. Today, a typical worker with a full-time job does only 37 hours.

Of all the seismic changes, it is probably the type of jobs that people did which have changed most dramatically.

In 1952, 8.7million people worked in manufacturing. Today, the number is a paltry 2.5million.

Around 880,000 worked in �mining and quarrying�, compared to 60,000 today, while the number working in agriculture, forestry and fishing has tumbled from 725,000 to 460,000.

There are some jobs which barely existed 60 years ago. In 1952, there were only around 20,000 people working in personnel, compared to today�s army of around 400,000.

But some things that never change. Around six million people worked in the public sector, which is exactly the number which currently make up the State workforce.

And how many people did not work? Not very many, according to the report, which shows that the number of working women was much higher than expected.
Around one in two women of working age had a job in the 1950s, compared to two-thirds today.
Worker sewing a lady's shoe at a footwear factory, Leicester, in 1959
Despite shorter hours and better working conditions than 50 years ago, we are not any happier about our work lives
It is the number of working men which has changed far more significantly, from 96 per cent in the 1950s to 75 per cent today, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the number of people claiming unemployment benefits has ballooned from around 350,000 to nearly 1.6million today.

And young people are far less likely to have a job. People under the age of 25 made up one in three of the workforce, compared to one in seven today.

The CIPD report was based on official figures from the Office for National Statistics and historical figures provided by old Government department�s records.

""Interesting... a 23% increase in population but a 0% increase in public sector jobs. Tell us again about our 'bloated public sector' these days? - A. V. Dicey, London, 1/2/2012 21:14"++++++++++++ Of course, our public sector no longer adminsters an Empire and our Army is a quarter of the size. - Andrew, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, 1/2/2012 21:52" I should also add that we no longer employ hundreds of thousands of coal miners, railwaymen, people working for electricity boards, BA, the liquor trade and for telephone companies. Now we get none of these things from the state but still employ the same number of people. That's what I call a bloated public sector.

Britain was British then and not full of foreigners like it is today, we need get these leeches out of our country then we will have jobs and homes for the British.

Athelstan I · Guest