The table compares the changes in the number of employees and factories in England and Wales between 1851 and 1901. It shows the number of male and female workers, the total employees, and the number of factories.
Overall, employment declined dramatically over the period, with the total workforce falling to nearly one-eighth of its original size. Men outnumbered women in all year except 1861 shown. The number of factories followed a very different pattern, rising sharply at first then decreasing gradually, although it remained considerably higher in 1901 than in 1851.
In 1851, the industry employed 287,100 males and 190,000 females, giving a total of 477,100 workers. After ten years the number of female three times higher than that of male, at 160,000 and 131,780 respectively. This figure continued to decrease significantly from 1861 to 1871 in both genders, reaching 80,123 in male employees and 60,000 in female employees. This employment figure shows a slow and gradual decline over time, although men remained a larger group throughout, the difference between two genders was smallest in 1901. The number of male stood at 31,000, which was higher than that of female by 10,000 in the final year.
Total employment reflected this broad downward trend, falling steeply from 477,100 in the first year to 61,000 in 1901, this figure went down about eightfolds of its original size. By contrast, the number of factories almost tripled from 225 to a peak of 721 between 1851 and 1881. But then it declined steadily to 625 in 1891 and 600 in 1901. As a result, the industry ended the period with far fewer workers, but substantially more factories than it had started with.