"Occupational segregation in England and Wales during the 20th century was consistently high, but declining in the 1980s. This article shows a steeper fall during the 1990s. Longitudinal analysis of patterns of population change and economic activity suggests that the decline in segregation across all ethnic groups over the 1990s was fuelled by structural change in the labour market. By 2001, workers of both sexes and all ethnic groups were less likely to be concentrated in manual and manufacturing occupations and more likely to be concentrated in service sector jobs. The datasets used are the 1991 and 2001 Censuses, the ONS Longitudinal Study (LS) and the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The coverage of Census data allows analysis of segregation patterns by sex and ethnicity. In both 1991 and 2001 workers were less segregated by ethnicity than they were by sex. The only exceptions were the Bangladeshi and Chinese groups. In terms of disadvantage, in both 1991 and 2001 men were more likely to be in better-paid occupations than women. This was the case for all ethnic groups other than Bangladeshi. In 2001, only Indian men were more advantaged than White men. In contrast, Indian, Black Caribbean and Chinese women were more advantaged than White women. Bangladeshi men and women formed the most disadvantaged group relative to White people of the same sex."

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