How skilled were English agricultural labourers in the early nineteenth century?¹

Abstract

Using the wage accounts of two different farms in the 1830s and 1840s, matched with census records to determine the age of the workers, this article estimates age-wage profiles for male and female agricultural labourers. Females earned less than males, and had less wage growth over their life cycles. Male wage profiles peaked at age 30-5, earlier than the wage profiles of workers today. Before the age of 30 wage growth was more rapid than increases in strength, but less rapid than wage growth among factory workers. If wage increases after the age of 20 indicate skill acquisition, then male agricultural labourers acquired a significant amount of skill, but less skill than contemporaneous factory workers.xamining the wage profile of male cotton-factory workers in 1833, Boot concludes that the profile 'conforms closely to that predicted by human capital theory, and bears a striking resemblance to earnings profiles in the mid-twentieth century'. 2 He also finds that wage profiles in other industries were similar to those in cotton. 3 Examining the same profiles, as well as profiles from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Johnson suggests that the uniform structure of male wage profiles across industry and over time supports the claim that wages were set by custom rather than markets. 4 Both claims are based on the only available wage profiles from early nineteenth-century Britain, the wage profiles of factory workers collected by Mitchell in 1833 for the factory employment commission. 5 But were the wage profiles in manufacturing representative of the economy as a whole? This article estimates wage profiles for agricultural labourers in the 1830s and 1840s and shows that they had a very different shape from those of factory workers.Age-wage profiles are often used as an indicator of how much skill individuals acquire, as in Mincer's classic study. 6 Boot's conclusion that

Occupational Choice and the Spirit of Capitalism

“…Burnette (2006) documents that the wages of English farm workers in the early nineteenth century varied little between the ages of 20 and 60. The landed gentry derived its income mostly from owning land and, to a smaller extent, from mining projects (Beckett 1986).…”

Estimating Historical Wage Profiles

“…The data are from a 1833 parliamentary survey of various manufacturing industries and have been used by Mac Boot (1995), Paul Johnson (2003), Joyce Burnette (2006), and Mac Boot and John Maindonald (2008) to examine wage profiles. 4 We use data on workers in the cotton industry in Lancashire and Glasgow and in the wool industry in Leeds.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2006

“…The work and wages of female agricultural labourers on a Lincolnshire estate are examined by Ulyatt, who places particular emphasis upon the ‘confined’ labour of wives and daughters of existing estate workers, suggesting a progressive decline in the use of such labour during the early nineteenth century. Burnette, meanwhile, infers increasing levels of skill among agricultural labourers from the wage accounts of two English farms in the 1830s and 1840s. Male wages increased throughout adolescence and young adulthood in line with increases in the physical strength of workers, but grew more rapidly up to the age of 30 than might be expected merely from an increase in workers’ physical ability to perform labour.…”