Great Britain’s workforce in the 21 st century is in many ways unrecognisable to that of 1974 when the Health and Safety at Work Act created the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) and Executive (HSE):

• The intervening period has shown a shift from employment in the traditional manufacturing industries to an increasing growth of a diversified service sector.
  (3 million jobs in manufacturing have disappeared, while the service sector now employs 83% of workers).
• The total number of employees in Great Britain in 1974 has increased from 22.3 million in 1974 to 26.4 million in 2006/07.
• In 1974, just over 2 million workers were self-employed; that figure is now over 3.9 million.
• The number of small firms has grown dramatically; at the beginning of 2006, figures from the Small Business Service estimated there were 4.5 million business enterprises in the UK, of which over 99% were classified as small (having less than 50 employees) and just 0.1% had over 250 employees. Overall, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) employed nearly 59% of the UK workforce , with almost 73% of enterprises having no employees.
• Part-time workers now constitute around a third  (31%) of the workforce, compared to a sixth in the mid-1970s; almost half of all employees (49.3%) are now women (compared to less than two-fifths).
• There has been a shift to new patterns and modes of working demanded by modern economies. This has seen a massive rise in temporary, agency and contract working, together with an inflow of migrant workers both from within and outside the EU.