1 - Agricultural seasonal unemployment, the standard of living, and women's work, 1690–1860

Summary

It is common for historians working on changes in the standard of living and real wage trends to acknowledge the importance and the intractibility of the problem of changing levels of unemployment. Questions relating to the extent, regionally, and changes over time of yearly or seasonal unemployment have almost invariably been seen as unanswerable. M. W. Flinn, for example, reconsidering the problems of real wages for the standard of living debate, has argued to this effect:

What matters from the point of view of the assessment of secular trends in the standard of living is secular trends in the short-run variation of levels of unemployment … Changes in the levels of unemployment and underemployment are probably doomed to remain among the imponderables of this problem … There were, of course, in this period, some groups among the working classes whose employment, and even wage-rates, fluctuated according to a fairly regular annual pattern. Given that this pattern remained fixed, the earnings of these groups would move in sympathy with wage-rates of those in permanent employment. It is possible, however, that one consequence of the not inconsiderable changes in the nature and pattern of employment over the whole period 1750–1850 was some disruption to the patterns of employment-distribution of the seasonally or irregularly employed. At the present time it is doubtful whether it would be possible to generalize with any confidence about any trends in this aspect of seasonal movements.