Life – a user's manual Part II - Boksidan

Örebrokuriren, 1950
Building material and services
Cosmetics
Clothes
Food
Cleaning, laundry etc
The proportion of ads are much larger than before. Some new products have also appeared
such as curtains and tea. Another new phenomenon in the provincial press is advertising for fashion clothing
and a large part of it is related to the upcoming spring fashion. But there were also a lot of ads for fur
products, something I have not seen before. Maybe it was fashionable at that time. It is also evident that the
building technology is more advanced, since they advertise quite extensively for water-based radiators and
water boilers etc. Furthermore, it seems to be a battle between modular home manufacturers.
Most of the food ads are from the cooperative food chain, which might not say so much about their actual
market share because the newspaper was a working class paper. Among the food ads it is still a large
proportion of ads for margarine, but herring has almost completely disappeared. Coffee dominates among
the beverages, but I also saw some ads for tea and even a few for soft drinks. The ads for beauty products are
dominated by soap ads (targeting women) and razor ads. Most ads for laundry, dishwashing and cleaning
involves washing. It seems to have been a battle between three or four brands that are all gone now.
1950 worked half of all the employed in
manufacturing or agriculture, today it is one -
fifth
In 1950 (SCB, 1962) a third of the population
worked in manufacturing/mining (32%) and quite
a number with trade/communication (22%) or in
agriculture (20%). Of the remaining 17% worked
in services, etc., or in the construction industry
(8%). The sector health care/social care probably
is included in the figures for services etc. But one
must note that at this time, many women were still
housewives (in 1960, women accounted for only
about 30% of the workforce).
At the end of the 1800s, however, it was no more
than 15% who worked with manufacturing/mining
(SCB, 1901) and 6% who worked with
trade/communications.
Foreign products, like these, were getting more common.
Today (SCB, 2004) 18% works with
manufacturing, 19% with trade/communication,
and 2% with agricultural tasks (including
forrestry). 17% works with nursing/care, 6% are
construction workers, 13% work in financial
services/media/business services and 11% with
education/research.
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