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#EconHist #Medieval #MiddleAges #Wages #Inequality #Labour

@lseechist.bsky.social

While we find evidence of the commercialization of labour markets, this did not benefit all labourers equally. Ultimately, we hope our attempt to look 'beyond' average wages reveals some new insights into both patterns of commercialization and the nature of medieval labour markets.

Ultimately, we find that wage inequality in medieval England was shaped by a complex interplay of market forces and persistent customary structures. High levels of commercialization didn’t always lead to higher wages; local customs and labour supply often mattered more.

By 1400, wage gaps shifted. Areas like East Anglia saw big wage increases, likely due to tighter labour markets after the Black Death. But the structure of inequality - who could bargain, and how - still largely hinged on occupation and custom.

Wage inequality also varied regionally. In 1300, ploughmen in the North of England earned far more than those in East Anglia, despite the fact that the latter region was highly commercialized. Occupation AND region played a more important role in determining workers' wages in 1400 than in 1300.

We also find growing commercialization in the labour market. Some roles became more “professionalized” and better paid. Others, especially part-time labour and young workers, were disappearing, in most places, by 1400.

Why? We find that customarily-fixed levels of in-kind wages of many ‘core’ workers insulated them from wage shocks, both positive and negative. By contrast, the jobs which paid more cash and were in high-demand at certain times of the year, like harvest, were more responsive to market forces.

We find that the Black Death reshaped labour markets, but not uniformly. ‘Core’ roles, like ploughmen and carters were well paid before the plague. After the plague, other roles, which had been more peripheral before the Black Death experienced wage growth, while ‘core’ workers saw stagnation.

We develop a new empirical approach using weekly wage rates reconstructed from manorial accounts, facilitating comparison of thousands of wage observations across occupation, region, and time.

The paper attempts to move beyond the focus on average wage trends in pre-industrial economies by examining the broad diversity of pay rates and forms of remuneration of agricultural labourers in medieval England.

I’m our faculty seminar, Karolina Hutkovà gave an overview of four (!) papers on the development of the British fiscal military state.

In the PhD seminar, @gregorysalter.bsky.social presented the first results of his study on the transition from seigniorial management to lessee farming in medieval England, with particular attention to how risk was managed and transferred.