(Photo credit: Nemodus photos, medieval women. https://flic.kr/p/6Wb7PS (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED))
Regular full-time employment at a single job may seem like the natural way of things, but it is, in fact, a fairly recent phenomenon. If we look back through European history, we see that, for centuries, most people had multiple occupations. Customary forms of employment and mixed occupations survived long after the advent of industry. In England, we read of Cornish tin miners who put their hand to pilchard fishing, northern lead miners who were also smallholders, village blacksmiths and other craftspeople who worked in building, carting and carpentry, and carpenters and builders who worked the fields.
This economy of multiple occupations strengthened the working household by providing additional income, cash to pay land rent, and a cushion against unemployment and famine. However, regular, full-time employment at a single wage-paying job was exceptional in Europe before 1800, and there’s no reason to believe that things had been any different for hundreds of years before.
Even with the advent of industrialisation, wage labour (working at a single job for money) was regarded as an activity distinct from other non-monetary, even non-utilitarian forms of work which were more culturally significant in creating and confirming social identity.
Wage labour was just a part of people’s experience before 1800, and it seems many people avoided it or did less of it if they could.
Then, from the early nineteenth century, wage labour expanded, and most households become entirely dependent on it. And other forms of customary and non-utilitarian work declined.
It’s remarkable to think of how recently this idea of regular full-time employment at a single job became normalised, and to remember that for hundreds of years previously, work took multiple forms and had varied meanings, motivations and outcomes. Making money was just a part of it, and often not a very important part.
Image description: this post contains a photo entitled medieval women, a colour photo of the head and face of a young woman who looks to the left with piercing green eyes. She wears a tattered and fraying earth-coloured hooded garment, and theatrical make up on her face, dark around her eyes, pale grey across her face, with patches of red like blood on her nose and chin.
References:
Malcolmson, R.W. (1981) Life and Labour in England, 1700–1780. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pahl, R.E. (1984) Divisions of Labour. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Thompson, E.P. (1967) ‘Time. work discipline and industrial capitalism’, Past and Present, 38, pp. 56–97.
Woodward, D. (1981) ‘Wage rates and living standards in pre-industrial England’, Past and Present, 91(1): pp. 28–46.
Matthew Moran 