A Flexible Future in Europe?: Changing Patterns of Employment in the United Kingdom

It is widely recognised that the 1980s have seen significant changes in patterns of employment in the UK, including major shifts in the industrial and occupational structure, and important developments in the labour market and the conditions and social relations of employment. What might prove more contentious is establishing which changes are the really significant ones and why they have occurred. Should attention be focused on the massive increase in unemployment in the first half of the decade, or on the 'de-regulation' of the labour market and the growth of flexibility (Department of Employment 1985: 18-21)? Have we been living in a period when relatively long term secular trends, such as the decline of employment in manufacturing, have culminated in a 'post-industrial society', or has it been the specific acts and/or failures to act by government which have been the most important influence? Will the l990s see a continuation of the trends of recent years, or will the 1 980s come to be seen as a temporary interruption to developments which characterised earlier decades? The aim of this paper is to consider the available evidence relating to changing patterns and-conditions of employment so as to to try to disentangle some of the longer term underlying trends from the more contingent and historically specific; and to show to what extent each has played its part in creating the labour force with which we enter the l990s, with its particular occupational and industrial structure. The discussion will be divided into two main parts: firstly, an account of the changing size and composition of the economically active population of the UK, the distribution of those in employment by sector, industry and occupation, the level of unemployment and the characteristics of the unemployed. This will be primarily descriptive, though so far as possible it will identify the most important influences on the changes which have taken place. Secondly, we shall consider the somewhat more contentious issues regarding the changing nature of employment relations the nature of the labour market, the conditions of