Selected Subjects: Workplace
Next Selection Previous Selection
In 1921 householders in England and Wales were asked to state the address of the place of work of each enumerated person. Increased transport facilities, combined with the increasing tendency in a highly organized and industrialized people to live in suburban residential areas, suggested the need to obtain some measurement of the daily movement of population to and from places of work. The question on the schedule, included under the general heading of Occupation and Employment, was: Place of Work Give the address of each person's place of work. For a person with no regular place of work write 'No fixed place
. If the work is carried on mainly at home, write 'at home' (No entry is required for any person who is retired or out of work). Figures, partly provisional, relating to London and the Home Counties, were published as a Another unfortunate defect, due to the postponement of the census until June, was the inclusion of varying proportions of visitors in returns from holiday and other resorts. In such areas the census or de facto
population was in excess of the resident or de jure
population and visitors included in the holiday population were recorded amongst those working outside the area. In these cases the normal tidal movement between workplace and residence was not truly represented by the relation between recorded work¿places and place of enumeration, the divergence varying with the amount of the local inflation. Details of the extent of inflation in certain areas of England and Wales were given in Appendix A to the The statistics for England and Wales were presented in detail in three tables in the report on In The 1951 Census question on the location of place of work of the persons in employment was similar to that asked at the 1921 Census when it was first introduced, but in 1951 the workplace information was tabulated against the area of usual residence and not, as in 1921, by the area of enumeration. Except that persons whose usual residence was outside England and Wales were treated as though they resided in the area of enumeration; and people with workplaces outside England and Wales were treated as working in the area of usual residence. In both 1921 and 1951, the addresses of workplace were copied, by enumer¿ators, on to postcards which were coded by Census Officers before being sent to the Census Office for use in preparing tabulations. A fuller description of this procedure will be found elsewhere in this chapter under Usual Residence and at pages 14 and 15 of the The published tables show for every borough and county district how many persons resident in that area had a workplace in another area and vice versa. This enables comparisons to be made between the day and night population in each area. The tables also give some indication of journey to work in so far as this involves crossing local authority boundaries. Differences between place of residence and place of work within the same local authority area are not revealed; the larger the extent of the local authority area, the greater the possibility of such concealed movement. On the other hand, in large built-up areas comprising several local authorities or for small towns surrounded by rural areas, a considerable amount of very short distance movement was included simply because local authority boundaries are crossed. The main errors which became apparent at tabulation stage were due to the recording of a Head Office address, instead of local place of work, or of 'no fixed workplace'. To provide this evidence investigations were made, by referring back to the schedule, of some improbable cases and these are fully documented in the commentary to the main volume. It should also be remembered that data is not only affected by error in recording of workplace but by errors in recording of usual residence (see A.14). These inaccuracies may also multiply the apparent degree of workplace movement. The main publication is the Workplace movement is also shown in the report No subject volume was produced for Scotland, and the only data is in the volume For 1961, the question on workplace was unchanged, but this topic was only included on the ten per cent schedule. Workplace was again tabulated by area of usual residence but, unlike 1951, persons with either a usual residence or a workplace outside England and Wales were excluded from the tabulations. Also members of the Armed Forces were included in the figures for total economically active residents but were excluded from all workplace movements. The method used in 1951 for assigning area codes of workplace by the completion of postcards sent through the mail was discontinued and coding was shared by the local Census Officers and Census Branch, Titchfield. This change of procedure is again fully explained in 4.14 and at pages 23 and 24 of the As the workplace question was contained on the sample schedule the inherent sampling errors affect these counts as much as any other subject. The data is also subject to bias particularly where the additional axes of socio-economic group, occupation and industry are used. For details see 7.2 and 7.3. No measure of quality for workplace is available and the persons completing the form had not been given specific guidance if they worked and lived in one area during the week and lived in some other area at the weekend. But evidence from the post-enumeration survey shows that just under ten persons in a thousand (of whom approximately three in a thousand were school¿children, students, or armed forces) had more than one usual residence. The main volume is Tables, similar to those for England and Wales, are published in volume VI In the 1966 Sample Census the workplace question was again unchanged in intention and was almost word for word similar to that used in 1961. There were however several major changes in the population included in the tabulations. First there was a reversion to the 1951 procedure in that the Armed Forces were included in workplace movements. Secondly, while persons living or working outside Great Britain were still excluded from all tabu¿lations, persons resident in England and Wales with a workplace in Scotland and persons resident in Scotland with a workplace in England and Wales were included. It should also be noted that if comparison is made with persons in employ¿ment in the The question on place of work (question 15) was deliberately separated from that on employer and employer's business (question 12) in order to avoid the confusion which has arisen in the past in some peoples minds between 'employer's address' and 'place of work'. A large firm with several establishments in different areas may have one address but several places of work or may just have a head office address and the employees may be travellers who should have answered 'no fixed place'. The scope of the workplace tabulations was also enlarged by the advent of two completely new questions. The first was concerned with the main means of transport to work and read: Another new topic, allied to transport to work but directed to the household, was at question 27, the relevant part of which reads: Only this part of question 27 was used in the workplace and transport tables (Table 9). Both parts of this question, (Part (b) concerns cars by garaging arrangements and type of building), are used in the measurement of quality has been possible but it is particularly important to realise that some people do not claim to be usually resident at the address from which they go to work. The cross tabulation of address of usual residence with address of place of work produces some unlikely combi¿nations, even more so for this census when means of transport is added as an extra axis of classification. The more unlikely combinations, if they are not due to processing error, are most likely due to the fact that the people concerned had either no settled place of usual residence, or more than one place of work, or both. There is little change in the main publication except that the tabulations are published in two volumes with those relating principally to workplace in It is important to the user however to note that the major table, relating to areas of residence and workplace in combination, is now divided into two separate tables; one by residence and the other by workplace. And, for each local authority area, there is an additional line of figures giving resident and working in the area. Tables on workplace and transport also appear in the It should be noted that in the Similar tables were published for Scotland in one volume, Where, in the main tables, individual movements have been restricted (Tables 2 and 3) or where a local authority area is not shown because of thresholding of total inward or outward movement (Table 6) full tabulations are available in unpublished form for the cost of photocopying. Similarly for Tables 7-9, which show a reduced classification by means of transport to work, the full classification is available for the same areas. Also the statistics on journey to work classify areas of origin and destination only by local authority areas. Where the area is a large one, as in the case of a London Borough, the figures are less useful than they would be if a finer area classification were used which could identify areas within an authority where employment is concentrated. Local authorities were circulated before census day advising them that journey to work tabulations using wards, parishes or enumeration districts as the area units of origin and destination would be prepared for the cost of the additional coding. Several authorities took advantage of this offer. Further information on this range of tabulations can be obtained from the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, Titchfield. In Scotland similar arrangements were made for journey to work tabulations using city or burgh wards, county council divisions or enumeration districts. Further information on this range of tabulations can be obtained from the General Register Office, Edinburgh.4.13 Workplace
4.13.1 1921
Publications
4.13.2
1951
Coding
Interpretation of the data
Quality of data
Publications - England and Wales
Publications - Scotland
1961
Change in population included
Coding
Sampling error and bias
Quality of response
Publications - England and Wales
Publications - Scotland
4.13.3 Workplace and Transport to work, 1966
Change in population included
Change in layout of form
New questions
'16
What method of transport does the person normally use for the longest part, by distance, of the journey to the place of work given in reply to question 15?'
'27(a)
How many cars, including vans, taxed wholly or in part as private vehicles, are owned or used exclusively by you or members of your household?'
Quality of response
Publications - England and Wales
Publications - Scotland
Unpublished data
Workplace movements
Office of Population Censuses and Surveys/General Register Office, Guide to Census Reports: Great Britain 1801-1966 (London: HMSO, 1977) Crown Copyright. The Office of National Statistics has granted the Great Britain Historical GIS Project permission to computerise this publication and include it in this web site. All other rights reserved.