Investigating rural employment in England

Abstract

This article describes a new approach to the examination of rural employment. Using Craig's classification of Local Authority wards, the Special Workplace Statistics of the 1981 Population Census are analysed to provide a picture of rural and urban employment in five English counties. The findings emphasise the heterogeneity of rural England but show consistently higher levels of self-employment in rural areas. It is concluded that Craig's classification, together with datafiles linking postcodes to ward identifiers, provides a very useful research tool to those investigating rural areas.