Pilot Tessa Beyersdorff is an instructor and base manager at Bankstown Airport's Sydney Flying School. Credit:Steven Siewert "It was actually my mum who got me into it. She had a private license in the 70s. She used to take me along when she had lessons and just leave me in my pram, asleep. You could do that in those days!" Ms Beyersdorff says. The surge of women into the workforce was among the most dramatic shifts of the 20th century. Forget the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker. Australia at the turn of the century was awash with farmers, servants and dressmakers. Today, the workforce is ruled by sales assistants, nurses and general clerks, and one in 10 of us have occupations that didn't exist a century ago.

Women in the 1911 workforce This chart shows the 1911 workforce, split into men and women. Each bubble represents a type of job; the bigger the bubble, the more people work in that job. The seven colours represent the economic classes under which all jobs were categorised at the time. Of the 2 million Australians employed in 1911, 80 per cent were men. Nearly 40 per cent of women worked in 'domestic service and attendance', shown in grey. Of these, two thirds worked as house servants (that's the big grey bubble at the top right of the women's chart). This was the most common job for women in 1911.

Ninety-two of the 524 occupations recorded in Australia's first national census in 1911 didn't employ any women, a Fairfax Media analysis reveals. (These jobs are shown in red in the chart below.) No women worked in the navy, defence or police forces. There were no women coach or railway engine drivers, magistrates, electricians or chimney sweeps. A further 103 occupations employed between one and four women. The 1911 census records one woman among the 13,565 stevedores, one woman among the 4377 jockeys, and one woman among the 1730 letter carriers, for example. On the other hand, only 34 of the 10,223 Australians working as a "milliner, staymaker or glovemaker" were men. Only 40 of Australia's 9049 hospital, asylum and sick nurses were men, while only two men were recorded among Australia's 2685 domestic nurses. And all 4487 midwives in 1911 were women.

Work in the 21st century The 1911 census classified workers in seven economic classes: agricultural (those who worked the land), industrial (those who made things), commercial (those who sold things), professional (those who served society), transport and communications (those who delivered goods or messages), domestic (those who served others) and independent (those who didn't work). This chart shows the 2011 workforce, with occupations classified as they would have been in the 1911 census. ("Accountant", for example, which is considered a professional occupation in 2011 has been re-classified as "Commercial – Finance", since this is how accountants were classified in 1911. On the other hand, "Defence Force member", now regarded as a community occupation, has been assigned its 1911 classification of "Professional – Defence".) Notable for its absence in 2011 is the Independent class, which included pensioners, annuitants and "persons of independent means having no specific occupation". People in the latter group often listed their occupations as "lady" or "gentleman".

These days, women make up nearly half the workforce and are found in every occupation. Half belong to the commercial class and one quarter belong to the professional class. Commerce and industry have replaced agriculture as the cornerstone of the Australian economy. In 1911, nearly 36 per cent of men worked in agriculture. By 2011, that figure had shrunk to 6 per cent, making agriculture the smallest of the economic classes. Jobs created in the 20th century

One in 10 workers – more than 1.1 million people – have jobs that didn't exist in 1911, according to a Fairfax Media analysis matching today's jobs with those in the 1911 census. (The analysis emphasised the nature of the work and skills involved, rather than the specific tasks involved or job title.) Nearly one million of these 'new' jobs would fit into what the 1911 census described as the commercial class. They include office jobs such as office manager, project administrator or human resources professional. Others are in information technology – software programmers, website developers, and ICT managers, support technicians and systems analysts. The labour force of 1911 didn't include any fitness instructors or sports centre managers (who would have imagined an entire industry based on making people exercise?), nor had tourism or commercial air travel been invented. The idea of a woman teaching ordinary folk how to fly would certainly have seemed quite odd – and still does to some people, Ms Beyersdorff says.

"Sometimes we get older guys coming through, who might say 'I'm not flying with a girl!' but then they go flying and say, 'Oh actually, she was really safe and a really good pilot', so I think the mentality is slowly changing," she says. Women flying high: Pilot Tessa Beyersdorff with collegues Steph Barry, Amelia Andermahr and Kara Eggleston at Bankstown Airport's Sydney Flying School. Credit:Steven Siewert Jobs that outlasted the century Other jobs look like they're here to stay, although we seem to have lost some of the catchier titles. Australia's hospitality sector has expanded to over 400,000 "coffee palace, tea-room and eating-house keepers and servants" (now known as restaurant, cafe and bar workers), while more than 10,100 Australians still earn their living through "disposal of the dead".

Some 9000 of us still get by selling "chance events" and about 85,000 work in "amusements", a field that in 1911 included actors, dancers, circus performers, cricket players, billiard-table proprietors and zoo-keepers. Meanwhile, other work still in existence today is no longer recorded in the census, such as "paid companion", which described 1125 women and three men in 1911, and "inspector of nuisances", which described 373 workers in 1911. The changing structure of Australia's workforce has underscored other changes in the way we work. Alongside the decline of manufacturing, for example, was a fall in unionism and the erosion of the idea of the "job for life", says Greg Patmore, Professor of Business and Labour History at The University of Sydney. "We often talk about the shift in the nature of jobs but less about the quality of those jobs, which is also very important," he says.