The Social and Economic Structure of Contemporary Europe605economies, industrial employment was declining: In
Britain it fell from 49 percent in 1950 to 42 percent
in 1980; in Sweden, from 45 percent in 1960 to 34
percent in 1980.
Age, Gender, and the Labor Force
Economists who study the economic vitality of a soci-
ety use an index called the participation rate to measure
the volume and distribution of labor in an economy.
Changes in the components of the participation rate
tell historians much about a changing society. The total
participation rate merely counts all employed persons
plus all part-time workers, expressed as a percentage
of the population. As a healthy economy grows, so
does the participation rate. This simple index provides
economic historians with a long perspective on the
twentieth century. In 1900 Europe had experienced a
generation of internal peace and had a generally solid
economy; the participation rate was high. BetweenIllustration 30.3
The Service Economy.The biggest
change in Western economies during
the twentieth century was the growth of
a third sector of the economy, neither
agricultural nor industrial, which became
the dominant sector of European
economies after World War II. This ser-
vice economy depicted itself—as in this
photograph from the early days of the
computer revolution in the 1960s—as
the modern and efficient sector of the
economy, as compared with the smoke-
stack economy of heavy industry and
large factories. (Note that men work
with the office computer at this date.)
In 1967 the French director Jacques
Tati made a film (part of the service
economy) about the cold, impersonal
nature of life in the service economy.
The story of Playtimeinvolves visitors to
Paris who see only the business and of-
fice world, encountering the beautiful,
historic Paris only through pictures on
post cards. In this scene, Tati makes fun
of the impersonal, labyrinthine office of
cubicles.