This project reconstructs the emergence of new occupations in Britain between 1851 and 1911, using full-count individual-level census data to capture one of the most dynamic periods of industrial transformation in history. While we have some estimates on the decline of traditional work during mechanization, we know far less about the countervailing process of job creation: when, where, and how new work arose. By parsing millions of raw occupation strings into approximately 8,000 micro-occupations, this study identifies the sectors, regions, and organizational changes that generated new employment.

Preliminary results show that most new jobs emerged within existing industries rather than in wholly new ones, that industrial growth was geographically uneven, and that the rise of coordination and supervisory roles was a key marker of structural change. The decline of apprenticeships and weakening of intergenerational occupational transmission highlight the erosion of traditional skill pathways as new work took shape. Together, these patterns offer the first systematic map of how technological change reshaped Britain’s occupational structure from within, laying the groundwork for future analysis of how job creation and job loss align across space and time.