Hidden workers

As I travelled around Britain I was fascinated to find out where everyone worked. There seemed to be lots of new houses. Small rural towns that I knew as a child now seemed to be ringed with housing estates, but there was no sign where everyone was working.

I am still struggling to work out where everyone works. I have been going through the government statistics which are interesting and give a few clues. Firstly how few people are working, the population is 61 million (give or take) but there are only 31 million economically active people (and that includes those who are unemployed but available for work). There are the young and the old who aren't working, but there are still lots of people not working.

Wholesale/retail is the largest single sector account for 4.5 million jobs, followed by 4.2 million people who are self-employed. There is then a category called 'rent and other business services' which accounts for a further 4.2 million; this is followed by 3.3 million people working in health and social work and 2.2 million in education. After this the numbers fall, there are (or were at the end of 2008) more estate agents than people employed in farming, fishing, forestry and the Armed Forces added together.

But the figures don't tell me that much. The big categories hide as much as they reveal. We seem to have become a nation of shoppers as well as shopkeepers, so the recession will bite hard and deep.

It's also struck me that lots of work is hidden work. We don't know what it takes to get the stuff we buy into the shops and perhaps that is where people are working. We recognise the person who takes the money and gives us the goods, but don't think about the finance department and the cleaners, the stylists and delivery drivers.

These days it is difficult to work out what people do from the clothes they wear. Perhaps it's a sign of changing times, but sometimes it's difficult to know exactly what it is that most of your friends are doing at work.