Unveiling Historical Occupational Structures and
its Implications for
Sectoral Labour Productivity Analysis in
Japan's Economic Growth
Abstract
This paper aims to offer new estimates of gainfully occupied workers in Japan between 1885 and 1940. The estimates are made by taking explicitly widespread farm-family by-employment into account, and then they will be allocated into the primary, secondary and tertiary (PST) sectors. With the new workforce statistics and revised estimates of net output in the tertiary sector for the same period, we would also like to examine the levels of differentials in average labour productivity between the three sectors. The paper will show that labour productivity differentials between agriculture and manufacturing in early stages of Japan's industrialisation were not as wide as both Gerschenkronian and dual structurist arguments tended to assume for late industrialisers.
