Manpower statistics cover a wide field.1 This chapter concentrates on those aspects which are of particular importance to sociologists: the structure of the occupied population, unemployment, hours of work, wage rates and earnings, the cost-of-living and retail prices, trade union membership, and industrial disputes. Statistics on other aspects of the labour force, such as mobility and turnover and vacancies in industry, are not discussed here partly because of lack of space but mainly because of lack of adequate historical data. The emphasis in the following discussion is generally upon the strengths and weaknesses of the various series rather than upon the trends which they reveal.