In 1926, out of every 100 people in Ireland who had a job, 51 worked in farming. Making things, building, transport, shops and trade, domestic service and other work made up the rest, and each of those was much smaller than farming.

What do you notice? What do you wonder?

Our question for today is how has the work people do in our place changed since 1926?

In 1926 the new Irish Free State counted everyone living here. One thing the counters wrote down was the work people did. The tables show, out of every 100 people aged 12 and over who had a job, how many worked on the land, how many made or mended things, how many built, drove or sold, how many were paid to cook, clean or mind children in someone else's home, and how many worked in other ways.

Those numbers are already worked out for each county. You read each bar's height straight from the table. You do not need to share or convert a count.

From a child growing up to becoming a parent is about twenty-five to thirty years. That stretch is one generation. Three generations take us from 1926 to now. In many counties the biggest kind of work then was farming. Work near us today may look different.

The 1926 census is strong evidence, but it has limits. Unpaid work at home, such as cooking, washing and minding children, was not counted. The figures are for a whole county, not for one street or parish. So they are a real clue about change, and they are not the whole story of our own place.

We will build a chart for our own county in 1926, then set it beside what we know about work near us today.

1. Listen for our county's seven numbers, one kind of work at a time.
2. When it is your turn at the board, drag that bar to the matching height.
3. When all seven bars are set, look at the shape. Which kind of work was biggest? Which were small?
4. Now listen to what we know about work around us today. What seems different, and what seems to have stayed?

The map shows our school and the old workplaces still marked near us, such as a mill, a creamery, a forge or a station. Those pins are clues to work people did in the past.

1. Look at each old workplace pin. What kind of work do you think happened there?
2. When it is your turn at the board, choose a colour in the key for a kind of work people do near us today, tap Pin, then tap the map where that work happens now.
3. Add to the key if you need a new kind of work.

Using the chart and the map together, how has the work people do in our place changed since 1926, and what has stayed?

What can the 1926 table NOT tell us about work on our own street?