In the 1820s, agents from employers in France, Germany and the United States prowled around the factory towns of Britain, looking for skilled workers to lure away. A foreign agent “has only to watch at my gates as they come out and in, and get the names of the most able men”, complained one employer at the time. “Many engagements of this sort have been made in this way.”
In Alsace at around the same time, British machine maker Job Dixon had to bring experts over from England to set up the spinning machinery he had made. “Our spinners will do as much in six hours as theirs in 12,” he said.
These days, British workers are less productive per hour than their French, German and American counterparts. But these stories also hint at an important truth about technology and how it transforms economies – one that is just as relevant for today’s “second machine age” as it was for the first.
Historians have put forward plenty of possible reasons for why the industrial revolution happened in Britain and not elsewhere, but one key factor was the quality and skill of the country’s workers. They were healthier, better fed and taller than people on the Continent, and they benefited from a flexible apprenticeship system that helped instil new skills quickly. This meant the British workforce was not just good at coming up with new inventions, but at installing them, maintaining them, tweaking them and optimising them on the shop floor. As one economic history paper puts it, “these characteristics did not require much science or even originality, but they needed people who were good with their hands and had been taught how to use them”.
The 21st century still needs people who can put new technology to good use. A paper published this year using data from France shows that “techies” – people who install, maintain, manage and support IT and other technology systems – drive up productivity within companies. This doesn’t just apply to techies in manufacturing firms or research and development roles, but to a broad range of areas and sectors. There was also a strong association between the employment of techies and the likelihood of the company offering training in technical skills.
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What does this mean for Britain, home of the original industrial revolution, as the next wave of technological change begins to break? Just like last time, it has no shortage of great inventors. Last year, the UK was named the world’s fourth most innovative economy after Switzerland, the US and Sweden, according to a ranking produced by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
But a brilliant cluster of top universities, companies and start-ups in the southeast of England isn’t going to be enough. If the UK wants to boost output per hour with the help of artificial intelligence and robotics, it will need technically proficient people in every region and sector who can implement these innovations, from auto supplier factories in the Midlands to marketing companies in the north.
The number of people studying subjects such as science, engineering and technology has increased over the years, but the most popular undergraduate degree subject is “business and management” – something that doesn’t seem to have led to better-run or more-productive businesses (at least not yet.)
Meanwhile, the apprenticeship system – so central to supplying the skills that sustained the industrial revolution – is in decline after well-intentioned but bungled reforms. The number of people starting apprenticeships in so-called Stem areas (construction, engineering, manufacturing, IT, science and maths) dropped by about 20 per cent between 2017-2018 and 2022-2023 amid a general fall in numbers. Worse, the decline in the number of new apprentices has been sharpest in the most deprived areas.
Even the basic advantage that underpinned the UK’s “human capital” in the industrial revolution – taller, better-fed workers than other countries – can’t be taken for granted any more. It might be tempting to think that height doesn’t matter in a digital age, but it is a good indicator of childhood living conditions such as the quality of nutrition, sleep, stress and illness. These days the UK’s five-year-olds are on average shorter than children of the same age in France, Germany and the US.
If the British government wants to harness the next machine age to boost productivity, it won’t be enough to fine-tune regulation and foster innovation. Success will also depend on investing in people right across the economy so that they’re healthy, confident and skilled enough to put those innovations to use. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023
