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English
This article analyses trends in public employment in Britain since the I970s, comparing them with the postwar pattern of trends up to that period. The most striking development has been the dramatic decline in public employment in 'industrial' activities through the reduction of staff in existing industries and, since 1979, the continuing privatisation or contracting out of industrial activities. Decline elsewhere has been less dramatic and far from universal, and is in part due to the transfer of activities to a nominally private, but government-funded and regulated, quasi-public sector. Evidence for a move towards a 'post-modern' structure of public employment is mixed. There has been a move towards contracting and quasi-contracting, but in many cases this is a different means of transmitting bureaucratic regulation. There has been a changing relative distribution towards more part-time and casual work, with a heavy gender bias. Britain does seem to be special among OECD countries in the sharp decline in general government employment in relation to total employment since the late 1980s, but this is largely due to the removal of some education functions from local government to nominally private bodies, and the reclassification of most health service employees.